Gear Review: Find Your Strings with D’Addario’s String Finder

You might already know that D’Addario is the world’s largest manufacturer of musical instrument accessories. They are the go-to designer and manufacturer of musical instrument strings for many professionals. Now they are helping musicians around the globe find their perfect string set with an inventive new concept called String Finder.

Finding the best set of strings can be a daunting task. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been playing. If you are a beginner looking for your own sound or a seasoned professional player looking for a new one, there are so many choices and personal preferences, that most times, you just fall back to the strings you used last time. If that’s your sound, that’s great. But is it the best sound for you? Is there something better? 

To make that process easier and more intuitive, D’Addario set out to create what you might call a ‘recommendation engine’ that would guide players through the decision-making process. Tapping into their decades of string-making expertise, D’Addario worked with Cartful Solutions to develop a simple, but powerful tool that sifts through over 5,000 possibilities in its database to identify the best set of strings for each player’s needs.

Inside String Finder’s interactive web application you are asked all the right questions to create a score that will point the application–and you–to just one of D’Addario’s many string options–the best one. You are asked basic questions like what instrument you play and how many strings are in the set, but also more general information about you. Are you a singer-songwriter or a lead guitarist? Where do you expect to be performing, outside or in the studio?  Professional players know that all these factors are important for making the right string choice. The website also helps you through questions about your tonal preferences and the different properties of different string sets. Do you prefer light or heavy gauge, or perhaps one of the many sets with mixed gauges? The tone you favor is also factored in along with basic information about your playing style.

Once you’ve answered the questions and established a score, String Finder will point you to just one set of strings that–based on your input–is the best for you and your playing situation. It also provides a couple of alternate suggestions and offers to email you the result for your records.

It’s easy to be overwhelmed by the number of options available and lack the detailed knowledge that surrounds what turns out to be thousands of options in order to find the string set that is best suited for your instrument, playing conditions, and stylistic goals. Plus, exploring on your own is time-consuming, mind-numbing, and expensive. String Finder was built to take the guesswork out of the process and make string selection easy. 

Find your best match with String Finder HERE.

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