The Best Electric Guitar Strings: Why Elixir Nanoweb Wins (and How to Track Them)

March 9, 2026by OpenFret Team

Ask ten guitarists for the best electric guitar strings and you'll get ten answers, most of them tribal. Here's mine, with reasons: Elixir Nanoweb. I've put them on everything I own. The short version is that they sound good for months instead of weeks, and they quietly fix the one problem nobody likes to admit they have: losing track of how old their strings actually are.

Why Elixir Nanoweb

Elixir coats the entire string in an ultra-thin polymer. Nanoweb is the thin coating, so the strings feel and sound close to uncoated, but the coating keeps sweat, skin, and grime out of the windings. That gunk is what actually kills a normal set: they go dull and lifeless after a week or two of real playing. Coated strings stay bright far longer. Elixir claims three to five times the life of uncoated strings, and in my experience that's not just marketing. A set lasts me months.

They're also easier on your hands and your ears. You get less finger squeak sliding between positions, and a more consistent tone session to session because the strings aren't dying under you. If sore fingertips are still your main complaint, a lighter gauge helps too, and there's more on that in finger pain from guitar.

Nanoweb vs Polyweb vs Optiweb

Elixir makes three coatings and the names matter. Polyweb is the thickest, warmer and smoother, good if you hate bright strings or finger squeak. Optiweb is the thinnest and crispest, closest to a brand-new uncoated set. Nanoweb sits in the middle, and for most electric players it's the right default: bright enough to cut, smooth enough to feel broken in, and long-lasting. Start with Nanoweb and only branch out if it's not your thing.

What gauge should you use?

Gauge is the thickness of the strings, and the right one depends mostly on your tuning. Heavier strings hold tension better when you tune down; lighter strings bend easier and are gentler on new fingers.

My defaults are simple. In E standard I run 9-42, what Elixir calls Super Light — easy to bend, fast under the fingers, great for lead playing. When I tune to D standard, or anything a full step down, I go up to 10-46 (Light). The extra thickness keeps the strings from going floppy when you drop the tuning, so they still feel tight and intonate properly. If you bounce between the two a lot, hybrid 9-46 sets exist for exactly that, but those two gauges cover most of what most players need. Whatever you pick, a chromatic tuner makes setting up a new tuning painless, and this guide to alternate tunings covers the popular ones.

How often should you change strings?

There's no fixed schedule, because it depends on how much you play, how much you sweat, and whether your strings are coated. A gigging player on uncoated strings might change weekly. A bedroom player on Elixirs might go three or four months. The honest rule is to change them when they stop sounding good, won't hold tune, or start to feel rough and grimy under your fingers.

The catch with long-lasting strings is that “a few months” is exactly the kind of thing you lose track of. You put a fresh set on, forget the date, and a half year later you're wondering why your tone went flat.

Let OpenFret track it for you

That's the boring problem from the top, and it's the reason OpenFret tracks string changes. Every guitar in your inventory has a string change log. You record the date and the set you put on — brand, gauge, and coating, so “Elixir Nanoweb, 9-42” is a couple of taps — and OpenFret keeps the history.

What you get back is the useful part. It shows the age of your current strings in days, your average change interval, and which set tends to last you longest. Because OpenFret also tracks your practice sessions, it ties string age to actual hours played, not just calendar days. A set that's been on two months but only seen three hours of playing is a very different thing from two months of daily practice, and the calendar alone won't tell you which one you've got. Keep more than one guitar and the log is per-instrument, so the acoustic you barely touch and the electric you live on each get their own honest history.

Why bother tracking it

Two reasons. First, you stop guessing. When your tone goes dull mid-session, you check the log instead of wondering. Second, you learn your own pattern — how long a set of Elixirs really lasts for the way you play — so you can keep a spare set around and change before a gig instead of the morning of one. Put a fresh set on, log it once, and the next time you wonder how old your strings are, the answer's sitting right there.

Elixirs cost more up front, usually around $13 to $15 a set against $5 to $8 for uncoated. But if one set lasts three or four times as long, the math works in your favor, and you spend a lot less time hunched over the guitar with a string winder. Buy good strings, track when you put them on, and play more.