Elixir Strings: Arriving Soon at Musical Buddies

Coming soon to Musical Buddies.

If you've ever wondered why your strings sound bright for a week and then die within a month, Elixir built an entire company around solving exactly that problem. We're excited to announce the Elixir Strings catalog is on its way to our shelves.

The Brand

Elixir Strings was founded in 1997 as part of W. L. Gore & Associates — the same company behind GORE-TEX — which also owns the Elixir, NANOWEB, POLYWEB, and OPTIWEB trademarks. The coated-string idea didn't start as a guitar product at all: Gore's engineers were testing coated wire for push-pull cables, and the coating happened to work — except it sounded poor on an actual guitar. Guitarists on the team asked whether the coating could be reworked to sound good without losing its protective qualities, and that question became the Elixir string project.

Getting there wasn't quick. Elixir's lab first analyzed the team's own favorite strings with a dynamic signal analyzer to set a real benchmark for tone, frequency response, and sustain. They built a custom abrasion tester to simulate real-world wear and used high-speed photography to study how coatings held up under actual playing. Then came the real test: prototype strings went out to nearly 15,000 guitarists who played real songs on their own guitars, with the first 5,000 sets of official prototypes shaping the final formula based on direct player feedback.

The Coatings, Explained

Elixir's whole pitch rests on a thin, proprietary coating that wraps the entire string — including the gaps between the windings, where grime and corrosion usually start — to keep tone and feel intact for longer than an uncoated string.

NANOWEB — an ultra-thin coating, built to feel and sound closest to an uncoated string while still protecting it.
POLYWEB — a thicker coating than NANOWEB, trading a touch of brightness for an even smoother feel and longer life.
OPTIWEB — described by Elixir as a "barely-there" coating, aimed at players who want the coating's protection with almost no sense that it's there at all.
ATTUNE — Elixir's Phosphor Bronze acoustic line, built on the same coating philosophy for acoustic players specifically.

What's Coming

Acoustic: 80/20 Bronze NANOWEB, Phosphor Bronze NANOWEB (Light, Medium, and Custom Light gauges), and the Phosphor Bronze ATTUNE line in Light and Custom Light gauges.

Bass: 4-String NANOWEB Light, built with the same corrosion-resistant coating for players who retune and play often.

Electric: NANOWEB Light and POLYWEB Custom Light sets, for players who want either the brighter, closer-to-uncoated NANOWEB feel or POLYWEB's smoother, longer-lasting coating.

Hear the Difference

For a side-by-side of what the coating actually changes in tone and feel:

Who's Actually Playing Them

Elixir's own artist page lists a genuinely wide range of players across acoustic and electric guitar and bass, including John Paul Jones (Led Zeppelin, electric bass), Richard Thompson (acoustic guitar), Kaki King (acoustic guitar), Chris Tomlin (acoustic guitar), Eric Church (acoustic guitar), Phil Keaggy (acoustic guitar), Marcus King (electric guitar), and Hadrien Feraud (electric bass), among many others worldwide.

Why It Matters

Strings are one of the few parts of an instrument that degrade no matter how well you take care of everything else. Elixir's entire reason for existing is to push that degradation curve out further — not by making a brighter string, but by keeping a good string sounding like itself for longer.

Musical Buddies will be an Authorized Elixir Strings dealer in Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria.

Browse the full incoming Elixir lineup here: Musical Buddies — Elixir Collection