About us

A while back, I played a friend’s guitar, and really enjoyed how I could attack the strings really hard without them going out of tune, so I asked him what string gauge he was using, as I wanted to recreate the same feel on my own instrument. However, his guitar was a JM tuned to D standard, and I play an LP tuned to E standard. To go about this in a smart way, I started checking string tensions on various online tools, and realized that even if I fond out the string tensions of the first guitar, it’s fairly complicated to figure out an ideal set for the second guitar, and then an available real-life string set that is similar enough to that ideal.

Long story short, I enlisted the help of my partner in our gaming company, Infinite Zone, and we made this website that does all this work - figure out what you are looking for, determine a theoretical ideal set, and recommend commercially available sets that are as close to that as possible.

Mathematically, string tension can be calculated from the scale length, the tuning (vibration frequency) and the unit weight of the string. We built our database from manufacturer’s published tension and unit weight data; and for manufacturers that don’t publish such data (which is about half of them), used calculated estimates. You’ll see whether the data is published (by the manufacturer for that exact string, scale length and tuning), calculated (from official measurements, should be quite exact) or estimated next to each recommendation.

Also, different manufacturers provide quite different tension data for strings that should be almost the same, which may be the result of different manufacturing tolerances or measuring practices - nevertheless, I chose to believe them, and use their published data whenever possible. This is why you will see the exact same string gauge sets from different manufacturers with different tension numbers.

Please keep in mind that string tension is just a part of how an instrument feels, plays, and sounds, so think of our recommendations as something that may be worth trying and seeing how you like instead of something that will be your holy grail string set.

If you feel like you got some value out of this site, and you would like to support us, you can Buy us a coffee, or buy one of our games for consoles or PC (most of them cost less than a set of strings).

Rock on,
Dávid