Gear: Gift Guide: D’Addario Tour-Grade String Change Kit
D’Addario Tour-Grade String Change Kit
Gear: Gift Guide
Tour-Grade String Change Kit
(D’Addario)
Here’s a practical, high-quality, and reasonably affordable gift for the musician or instrument tech in your life. D’Addario’s Tour-Grade String Change Kit offers a premium upgrade to three everyday tools. A tuning peg winder with smooth ball-bearing action speeds the process for bringing new strings to concert pitch, saving precious seconds when recovering from a broken string during a live set. The clearance and short throw on the winding arm also minimize catching on adjacent tuning pegs. The winder even includes a retractable bridge pin puller in the handle. The puller is a savior for an acoustic guitarist’s fingernails when removing tight pins, and the collet design grips the pin to prevent drops. The set’s clipper promises seven times the cutting force of the typical pliers, wire cutters, or diagonal cutters that many musicians borrow from the household toolbox. This clipper easily trims even heavy bass strings without damage to its hardened cutting surfaces. The two hand-held tools are packaged in a case that converts into a six-inch high cradle for your guitar neck, providing the welcome “third hand” for an efficient string swap or setup. Not only that, the case includes a graphic showing the ball-end colors of standard guitar strings, helping ensure you don’t install the D-string where the G-string belongs (it happens to everybody sometimes). The case will fit any gig bag and most instrument cases, making this pro-grade set travel-ready for years of use. ($54.99; daddario.com) – Jeff Elbel
