"My daughter said, that's really criminal, you're putting so much junk in the waste-stream": Jim D’Addario reveals the real reason why guitar strings are colour coded

They say you learn a new thing every day. So here’s yours for today: have you ever wondered why guitar strings are colour-coded? Not really? Anyway, in a recent interview with Billboard, D’ Addario CEO Jim D’Addario has revealed the real reason – and there’s an environmental friendly premise behind it.

"In the early 1990s, a package of strings had an envelope for each of the six strings," Jim recalled. "A paper envelope for each one, identified for each note, in a vinyl pouch with a fancy label. So there was a minimum of eight pieces of packaging."

"Sometimes there was a little advertisement as well," he added. While, a guitar string package might look just like any other, the secrets are on the inside. As D’Addario explained, cutting down on all the unnecessary waste was actually an idea that originated from his daughter.

"My daughter Amy was in high school, and they were studying environmental friendliness and recycling and packaging, and I was changing my strings on the bed and I had all this garbage when I was done. She said, 'You should really do something about that, that's really criminal, you're putting so much junk in the waste-stream just to change a set of strings.’”

Guitar Strings Guide - YouTube

Watch On

So what has this got to do with the colour-coding on the ball end? Well, D’Addario came up with an ingenious ploy: "I came up with a system of colour-coding the ball end on the string a different colour, then coiling those together in one corrosion-resistant plastic bag and having them colour-coded, so the silver one is this note, and the brass one is this note."

In Jim’s estimation, his scheme eliminated around 75% of the packaging. Multiply that by all the thousands of string packages that are sold around the world every day and you have cut out a hell of a lot unwanted packaging waste. Amy D’Addario was doubtless very proud of her dad.

So now you know.