Strings in the 21st Century
There are subscription services for everything these days. Shaving supplies, contact lenses, clothing, food... even tampons! It only makes sense that a lot of people are ordering guitar strings on-line. I change strings quite a bit so having them just show up at the door is pretty nice. Lets face it. most of the time when you DON'T change them, it's because you don't have any. String subscriptions by mail fix that problem from the comfort of your home.
Lots of Options
A bunch of companies have sprung up with the subscription idea. We tried five different ones and compared them for cost, ease of ordering, shipment time, packaging, and other factors. (we were not paid for these reviews and subscribed for real) We shot two videos. The first covers the website and ordering process and the second covers shipping time and packaging. This was not really a review of the products, as much as a review of the services themselves. Check out the table for a quick comparison.
Key Features
A few differences that stood out to me were...
- Don't forget shipping cost. Sometimes it offset the savings
- Some companies give you more choices of brands and types
- Amazon's offering was a 3 set pack. Look for those values
- A couple of the websites were really annoying. (see the videos)
I really liked the option to be able to order multiple brands at a time from some of the websites. This way you could service both your electric and acoustic for example.
I really liked Amazon because it was a prime product that just showed up like normal Amazon stuff.
One thing to note. At the time of this writing, we have not received anything from gearsupply.co . They are apparently having some growing pains and have a back order problem. We will let you now how that develops.
Overall I really like the idea of having strings just show up. It reminds to change them, and ensures that I always have some around. Here are links to the sites we tried.
Check out the videos below and learn more...