D'Addario Irish Tenor Banjo Strings, Nickel-Plated Steel, EJ63i, Medium Gauge 12-36, 5-String Set, Pack of 1

I use the Light gauge set strings with the phosphor bronze wound 4th string. On here they're listed as Custom-Light and incorrectly categorized under Nickel even though the 4th string is bronze. I personally do not enjoy nickel wound 4th strings, I find that they do not have that warm tone I love so much.These strings are great, I go through a set about once a month or so and that's playing every day for at least 20-30 minutes. They stay in tune well. I find that this gauge is slightly smaller than the Ernie Ball frailing strings that I've tried which give it just that little extra when it comes to brightness of tone AND clarity that I'm looking for without sounding muted or dead. I play clawhammer style if that matters.In the year and change I've been playing I've only had two strings snap on me and that was while I was restringing the instrument and I was very new to the instrument as a whole which I attribute the snapping more to my lack of experience at the time then to quality of product. It is important when stringing your instrument to press down on your strings occasionally in between tightening them while tuning to help them stretch in a more gentle fashion when getting up to tune instead of just cranking on the tuner until you reach pitch. Tuning them without that small step makes them more likely to break. Think of it as towing a car, you never just leave the rope loose in between vehicles and suddenly accelerate - that will cause the rope to break almost immediately when it comes under tension. You instead take the slack out and gradually increase tension until you're under load and you're off and rolling.TL:DR Best strings I've found so far though I'm always trying new ones just to see what's out there. Have fun!

Great banjo strings.

I use these on my old Deering Goodtime banjo with the Gumby head. I did not need to make any alterations to the nut or the bridge to make them fit. (Not saying you won’t need to, but I didn’t need to with mine) Awesome sound and very durable, but they do take a while to tune-in due to the amount of stretch that they have. This is not a flaw by any means, it’s absolutely normal for these types of strings. I may have taken a good week or more, until they set.It’s hard to compare these to a metal strings, but if I did, I would say that they hold their sound better in the long run. Metal strings seem to lose the sound after a while, but these things sound just as good now as the day that I put them on months ago. I play in all sorts of tunings and keys. I’ve tuned down low, as well as up to standard A, Double C and D tuning.

Good price. works well. These strings have lasted a long time.

I bought two sets, and both had issues with the high D string. The first one broke at the winding near the tailpiece right after stringing it, and the other, this is really weird, seems to have already been put on a banjo, though not wound around the peg, before it was wrapped up and sealed in the package. It was pre-bent right at the tuning peg and bridge. It is a new string, just bent, so it seems someone was just measuring it or something. The bend messed up the flow of the string around the peg, and left a slight bulge. It might possibly affect tuning stability (along with the other half-dozen finicky banjo tuning issues), but it's mostly just a minor cosmetic issue. Otherwise, the strings sound great. I've used D'Addarios for decades on my guitars, they're my favorites, but this is my first/second banjo set from the brand, and the first/second time there's ever been any issue(s).

Typical D'Addario strings. Durable, sound great

Awesome! Finally great brand and definitely buy it again.

I’ve seen people recommending the Irish Tenor Banjo strings for tuning a tenor **guitar** (Martin style 22.5” scale”) in GDAE vs the typical CGDA. There are two big reasons not to do this:(1) These Irish Tenor Banjo strings are loop-end strings. Fitting them into a pin bridge guitar is a pain and problematic. You need ball-end.(2) The string tension on a 22.5” Martin tenor guitar with the 12-36 Irish Tenor Banjo strings in GDAE will be about 25% less compared to the standard 10-36 Tenor Guitar set in CGDA.Bonus (3) it’s quite likely that the string material (nickel plated steel) is not optimized for acoustic guitar.The only acceptable set I’ve found are the John Pearse Irish tenor guitar 13-40 set, which should give you roughly equivalent tension to the 10-36 tuned CGDA in a Martin style tenor guitar.Keep in mind all of my comments are related to the idea of using these Irish tenor banjo strings in a 22.5” scale pin-bridge tenor guitar (ie Martin style).