So Who Actually Makes Strings?

[HHP]

Gibson used to. I had to visit the facility outside of Chicago to fill out some paperwork several years ago and walked through two rows of winding machines.

[D. Shelton]

Gnomes inside the hole in the Earth at the South Pole.

[ljguitar]

Hi all…
The face of string making has changed. There are certainly more string companies around now than in the 1970s.

Today companies like Everly and John Pearse oversee smaller string manufacturing operations and use their own machines.

Others have strings made by string factories, and the strings with their names on them are built to their specs. Companies who used to rebadge strings with their 'brand' abandoned selling strings to focus on building better guitars.

Others continue to offer branded strings which match instruments. Fender, Gibson, & Martin continue to sell strings branded the same as their instrument lines.

And some companies manufacture and sell strings for banjo, orchestral string instruments, electric guitars, mandolins, and foreign instruments (lute, oud, mandolina, high stringing guitars, baritone, bouzouki, etc), not just guitars. They even subdivide into flat wound, wound and ground flats, nickel, and other electric strings.

Some offer bulk strings in larger lots. I still buy individual strings in lots of 12 per plastic tube/sack, which I customize my string sets for high stringing or bumping the weight of a set of lights (.012) to replace the top string with a .013. Regardless of the full-sets of brands I stock, my replacement strings are all generic bulk strings.

There are small companies which spring up and disappear. I'm assuming it is because of the numbers of sets one has to commit to in order to make money, or perhaps not enough players like them well enough to try them a third, fourth, or fifth time.

Exotic strings (titanium) and strange strings (Cryogenically cured), Vacuum packaged, never-coiled (Nashville Straights), I've tried a bunch of em, liked them only to see them go away. So I tend to avoid boutique string companies.

I suppose as long companies can continually market exotic select strings in sufficient quantity that players will invest in them and they can make money, we'll see the smaller companies continuing on.

[Jeff Scott]

Originally Posted by D. Shelton

Gnomes inside the hole in the Earth at the South Pole.

Originally Posted by ljguitar

...strange strings (Cryogenically cured)...

Those are ones made by the Gnomes.................

[D. Shelton]

Originally Posted by Jeff Scott

Those are ones made by the Gnomes.................

Yes, I just want to keep the Keebler myth from taking hold here on AGF. Elves in trees make cookies. Gnomes in the Hole in the Pole make (strange) strings. Let's keep that straight, people .

[Bingoccc]

Some may enjoy this from D'addario

[Bingoccc]

Or Martin...

[rogthefrog]

Originally Posted by Bingoccc

Some may enjoy this from D'addario

Very cool, thanks for sharing.

I'm surprised they can put millions of tiny little balls on tiny pins by machine, but the cooling and packaging is done by hand.

[YamaYairi]

S.I.T. Strings are made in Akron, Ohio. I talked to an engineer at the plant last year. We were trying to get them to make something for us at work. I have heard they make good strings. I have a classical set waiting for me to try.

[kdn]

Curt Mangan http://www.curtmangan.com/ makes their own strings in Colorado. very nice strings i just cant afford them anymore

[state-it]

Originally Posted by rogthefrog

Very cool, thanks for sharing.

...I'm surprised they can put millions of tiny little balls on tiny pins by machine..

I've done some maintenance work in a very old factory with very old machinery that does similar things. The ingenuity of the engineers that design these machines is astounding.

And the fact that these machines were still in service... They were in service before they were powered by electricity. Then converted to aeons ago for the rotary mechanisms to be powered electrically.

[UK-centric reference:] A bit like Trigger's broom in 'Only Fools and Horses' - A 20 year old broom, still works perfectly (Only 17 new heads and 14 new handles)

As an aside, I started reading this thread hoping someone would pipe up saying they actually wound their own strings. Or maybe that's one for the 'Custom Build' Forum ...

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by state-it

As an aside, I started reading this thread hoping someone would pipe up saying they actually wound their own strings. Or maybe that's one for the 'Custom Build' Forum ...

It can certainly be done. I know when John Pearse moved from the United States to France and then Germany, at his European homes he had string-making equipment that he used for running up experimental and R&D string sets.

It was actually C. F. Martin & Co. who brought John over to the United States in the first place. They hired him to oversee their string production. At some point he met and married Mary Faith Rhoads, who is a Pennsylvania local, and together they started John Pearse Strings/Breezy Ridge Instruments.

But John did hands-on work making strings whenever he got interested in developing a new string type.


whm

[Treenewt]

Originally Posted by Wade Hampton

I'm not sure of the history and trajectory of the Darco brand of strings within the larger history of C.F. Martin & Co. I do know that for decades Darco has been the budget brand of strings Martin makes and markets: for about ten or twelve years I was a Martin telemarketing dealer, which meant that I could get strings and accessories like guitar cases at wholesale cost (but not Martin guitars.)

By the time I became a Martin telemarketing dealer I had been an enthusiastic convert to John Pearse strings for a few years, so I didn't get many strings through them - I mainly got guitar cases and various other things I could use. But at the time John Pearse wasn't making a light gauge mandolin string set, and I had (and have) a Gibson Mastertone mandolin-banjo that sounded muffled with mediums.

So at some point I was putting some other order together, and needed a couple of items to finish meeting my minimum order requirement - I think I was only three bucks short and didn't want to spend anymore than I had to - when I saw that there was a set of Darco mandolin strings in the gauges I wanted. So I got a set or two, just to get the other stuff I really wanted on its way to me.

So I got some Darco mandolin strings, and much to my surprise I found that I really liked them on that instrument. So from that point forward I deliberately used Darco strings on it. They lasted a good long time and sounded fine.

I've since switched to John Pearse strings on my mandolin-banjo, because Pearse started making a light gauge mandolin set and because I'm no longer a Martin telemarketing dealer. But based on that personal experience, I can recommend Darco strings as perfectly good strings. There isn't a thing wrong with them.

Well, you asked me the time and I told you how to build a watch. Sorry about that!

Just to show that "you can't always believe what you read," particularly if it's posted on an online guitar forum, I had read here that Martin had sold off their Darco string division to some other company and was no longer making them. But when I Googled "Darco guitar strings," what I found was a link to Martin's website:

https://www.martinguitar.com/compone...stringcategory

By all appearances, Martin still owns and makes the Darco brand. They remain a good quality budget brand of strings. Although Darcos rarely get mentioned in the various discussions we have about guitars strings on this forum, they're certainly worth trying.

Hope this helps.


Wade Hampton Miller

Wade, you are a man of many hats and talents! I am always blessed by the things you share with us!

[jaybones]

I believe that DR makes their own strings. They have that whole compression winding trade secret thing, and either they'd have to have iron clad confidentility agreements with the factories they contracted with, or pretty soon every string manufacturer would be doing that.

[Cypress Knee]

So this got me to wondering, if everyone on the AGF saved their excess string wire after re-stringing (not including old corroded strings) and sent it in at the end of the year, how much wire would there be to recycle?