Rusty Strings

There’s nothing more frustrating for us when a customer complains that the strings we sent them are rusty! The very thought that we have sent out a useless product makes us sick.

But the truth is we ship thousands of sets of strings, it's just not possible to check every single set. Sometimes it might be just a bad batch. We source our strings from official distributors so if they had a bad batch then it's likely that all string dealers will be affected. Most of the major string brands tackled the issue of corrosion a few years ago. D'addario were the first to invest in a gas sealed package to protect their strings. Most other brands have since followed their lead. Old style packaging with the cardboard box and paper envelopes for each string is, I’m pleased to say, becoming unacceptable. There are still a few brands that still do this. Martin, for example, though we rarely ever get any issue with Martin strings.

It's usually the plain strings that rust. Some brands have a thicker silver plating and we can only assume this is the case with Martin strings, hence they have much better resistance to rust. 
And some brands are just too small to invest in changing their packaging. Unfortunately, our priority is our customers and sending out rusty strings is not our idea of a good service. Sometimes you get a glitch, or as I said before, a bad batch. But if we continue to get problems with a brand we have to take action. Last year we reached out to DR Strings. We had experienced consistent rust issues with their Acoustic Guitar range of Strings. Although we tried to engage DR about it they ignored us. The result was we stopped selling DR Acoustic Strings and will continue that policy until they either change their packaging or bother to work with us. Their loss!

Rotosound is another brand that has been plagued with this problem. However, they recently announced their new updated foil sealed packaging to solve this issue. We’re hoping to have our entire Rotosound range replaced with their new packaging in the new few weeks.

It's important for customers to let us know about issues like this because unless they do, we may not discover there is a problem. One customer gave us feedback last year. He said he would never buy his strings ever again from us because our strings are rusty. Unfortunately he didn’t give a name, contact or any reference for us to figure out who he was. We were powerless to contact him and resolve the issue. The last thing we want is to send out a faulty product, there would be no point in our business if that was our game. So do contact us if there is a problem such as rust.

We’ve seen a few non rust issues too. Strings are organic in their composition. If for example the raw material has a fault, the string may fail. Or perhaps a manufacturing problem occurred. Unfortunately as string players you just have to accept that sometimes this might happen. It's the nature of the beast. Luckily it is quite rare.

And then there was the customer who picked up a set of D’addario XL strings off ebay for 2-3 Euro. He complained that our prices were way over priced and anyway D’addario strings were completely shit. What he didn’t realise is he had in fact purchased a set of counterfeit D’addario strings. Of course they are going to be shit! Ah the joys of retail.

Anyway, Here’s to rust free strings!