Who here has tried the Artist Guitars brand guitar strings?

[Simon Barden]

I received mine last Monday (4 sets to start) but haven't put them on a guitar yet.

I only bought one size (10-46 also) but didn't find identifying them from the bar code sticker difficult.
ELectric STrings 1046 (or ST could mean steel???)

Attachment 38202

You know what you’ve bought, so you already know what clues to look for. Let’s say you’re a luthier who’s been given a guitar to fit and cut a new nut on, and been given a packet of those strings. Whilst you might guess 10-46, you’d want to be surebefore selecting appropiate nut files. And there’s no clue as to the intermediate string gauges, so you’d need to go on line and look them up. It wouldn’t take much to make the sticker slightly bigger and add a line that said 10-13-16-26-36-46, which should be pretty clear to snyone.

[McCreed]

Well I finally got around to putting a set of Artist Guitars 10-46 strings on my last strat build (click for guitar - post #57).

I agree with Simon that their appearance is not as shiny as my usual D'Addario EXL-110's, but they do feel smooth.
However I have experienced two other less favourable things about them.
(FTR this is completely unscientific and may just be a matter of my own perception)

1) They don't seem as bright as a brand new set of D'A. They don't sound bad or dead, but I would compare them to a set of D'A that have been played (by me*) for a couple of weeks. *I have a very "string-friendly" body chemistry IYKWIM, so I don't kill strings very quickly.

2) I had the neck off the strat as a result of doing some other work, so when re-assembled it, I also re-did the set up and intonation.
The AG strings took a lot of tweaking to get the intonation right. Particularly the wound strings.
They had been on the guitar for 24 hours and played prior to doing the intonation.
Also worth noting that I'm quite confident the intonation was spot on with the D'A strings and before I removed the neck.

I have removed and re-assembled necks with little to no effect on the intonation before.

So, at this point, I'm glad I only bought a 4-pack and not sure if the $3 savings per pack is worth it.
I will use up the other 3 sets, but maybe just as sacrificial sets when I need to do a job that requires multiple unstringing and restringing.

I may also do more of a proper A/B test just to make sure I wasn't imagining things...

[OliSam]

Well I finally got around to putting a set of Artist Guitars 10-46 strings on my last strat build (click for guitar - post #57).

I agree with Simon that their appearance is not as shiny as my usual D'Addario EXL-110's, but they do feel smooth.
However I have experienced two other less favourable things about them.
(FTR this is completely unscientific and may just be a matter of my own perception)

1) They don't seem as bright as a brand new set of D'A. They don't sound bad or dead, but I would compare them to a set of D'A that have been played (by me*) for a couple of weeks. *I have a very "string-friendly" body chemistry IYKWIM, so I don't kill strings very quickly.

2) I had the neck off the strat as a result of doing some other work, so when re-assembled it, I also re-did the set up and intonation.
The AG strings took a lot of tweaking to get the intonation right. Particularly the wound strings.
They had been on the guitar for 24 hours and played prior to doing the intonation.
Also worth noting that I'm quite confident the intonation was spot on with the D'A strings and before I removed the neck.

I have removed and re-assembled necks with little to no effect on the intonation before.

So, at this point, I'm glad I only bought a 4-pack and not sure if the $3 savings per pack is worth it.
I will use up the other 3 sets, but maybe just as sacrificial sets when I need to do a job that requires multiple unstringing and restringing.

I may also do more of a proper A/B test just to make sure I wasn't imagining things...

I have bought them before and they do feeel different to me also.
I now use them in the initial stages of building guitars only.


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[Simon Barden]

I've just got the digital calipers out on the set I fitted and compared the low E string along the length to D'Addarios. The 0.046" D'addario E measured a constant 0.045" diameter all along the length. The 0.046" Artist E measured between 0.043" and 0.046" going up and down in between those values. With that amount of variation, it's no wonder the intonation is out so much after changing from D'Addarios.

No more Artist strings for me.