Guitar players can be obsessed with getting everything perfect when it comes to their tone.
Players pick the perfect guitar and pickups, use specific amps, and play with different pedals, but when it comes to strings, choices had been limited.
That was until Nashville company Stringjoy launched a year and a half ago with the goal of delivering custom strings of the highest quality to guitar players around the world.
“The truth is, when you address a need that’s already out there, it’s a pretty easy business model,” Scott Marquart, founder of Stringjoy, explained.
Marquart started the company with $500 and initially only sold the strings to his friends, but by using word of mouth on social media, the business quickly grew, largely because of the quality and custom options of the strings, as well as the personal touches included, like a handwritten note.
“Every time somebody gets a set of strings, they’ll always post a picture of it and share it with all of their friends,” Marquart said. “That’s just helped us grow organically all of the time. Every set that we send to someone ends up being kind of a marketing tool because they’ll post about it, rave about it, and then their friends get interested.”
Custom guitar strings are nothing new. They have been available for professional and sponsored artists since Jimi Hendrix took the stage at Woodstock, but Stringjoy claimed it's the first company to make them available for anyone who wants custom strings.
Stringjoy has always kept all of their guitar strings uncoiled in tubes before sending them out to customers.
“Strings are metal, so the tighter that you have them coiled up, that can be bad for the string,” Marquart explained.
Whenever someone contacts Stringjoy wanting new strings, the customer has been welcome to order anything they want or ask the company for suggestions based on their playing or based on their guitars.
“I’ll work with a lot of guys who have a collection of 20 or 30 guitars and want something totally different for each individual one,” Marquart said, adding that with each set made specifically for the consumer, there is no better bang for their buck out there. “When you look at the set of strings for basically eleven bucks, what that can do to change the way you play the guitar and the way that the guitar sounds, I don’t think there’s anything that can compare dollar for dollar for that.”
While customization has been the name of the game, Stringjoy also puts quality at the top of their priority list.
“I think the fresher, the fresher the strings are, the better,” Marquart said, adding that each string made for Stringjoy is made with high-end materials and examined before being sent out to the customer.
“The beautiful thing is if you get a set of strings from us, it’s probably been wound entirely in the past two weeks or so,” Marquart said.
Since Stringjoy was created a year and a half ago, the company has sent guitar strings to all 50 states and over 50 countries all over the world, and while they currently only sell the strings online, they’re looking to expand into shops in the Nashville area.
Stringjoy has also made it a point to give back to the music community, giving five percent of their profits to music education programs in the United States.
To learn more about Stringjoy, you can visit their website by clicking here.
