Daddario EXL125-10P

I've played D'addario strings for 28 years (custom lights for the last 25) - I've tried Ernie Ball and Elixir but keep coming back to D'addario for their feel and consistent, bright tone. The custom lights provide a great balance between light tops for ease of string bending, with heavier bottoms for big chunky chord playing. I play with quite an aggressive picking hand, but with d'addario I very rarely break strings. The only fault I have with them is that a few years ago D'addario stopped packaging the strings in individual paper sleeves in favour of all six strings coiled together in one sealed plastic package (to preserve their shelf life I guess). Unfortunately this sometimes makes the strings tricky to separate, and if you don't take care it's easy to get them kinked. For that they lose one star. That aside, a great product.

D'Addario strings have been my go-to brand for many years, because they provide the right tone and longevity without breaking the bank. I have always oscillated between .009 and .010 sets, but this hybrid set provides the ease of playing the top strings for those endless solos, while giving a bit more grunt on the low strings.

The main downside to D-Addario's strings is that they coil the strings together in pairs, so E/A, D/G, B/E. They apparently do this to make it easier to count the strings in the factory so you definitely get six in a pack! All well and good, but if you have to replace a broken strings at a gig, it becomes troublesome to uncoil two strings, select the one you want and then put the other one back!