Guitar String Gauge Label Comparator

Last updated 2026-08-18

"Light," "Custom Light," "Medium" — acoustic string gauge labels sound like a shared vocabulary. We fetched D'Addario, Elixir and Ernie Ball's own current pages directly and found two of the three agree on every number behind every shared label — and the third doesn't. D'Addario's own EJ16 page and Elixir's own spec table both state "Light" as 12-53. Ernie Ball's own page states its "Light" as 11-52 — the exact gauge D'Addario's and Elixir's own pages call "Custom Light." Ask for "Light" strings across these three brands and two of them sell you the same strings; the third sells you a full standard step lighter.

Label (as each brand names it)	D'Addario	Elixir	Ernie Ball
Extra Light	10-47	10-47	10-50
Custom Light	11-52	11-52	11.5-54
Light	12-53	12-53	11-52
Medium	13-56	13-56	13-56*

* Medium agrees on the high-E and low-E numbers across all three brands, but not on every string in between — see the full six-string breakdown below.

What "closest" means here Enter the gauge of your high E (1st) and low E (6th) string — the two numbers every brand's own page uses to name a set, e.g. "12-53." For each of the 16 (brand, label) rows above and below, this tool adds how far off its own high-E number is from yours to how far off its own low-E number is, and ranks every row by that combined distance, closest first. It is a ranking score, not a real-world unit — a distance of 1.0 could be a 1-thousandth miss on one string, or a half-thousandth miss on both.

Every set, every string

The ranking above uses only the high-E and low-E numbers, because that's what every brand's own page uses to name a set. Here is the full six-string breakdown for all 16 rows, exactly as each brand's own current page states it, for anyone who wants to check a middle string too.

Brand	Label	1st	2nd	3rd	4th	5th	6th
D'Addario	Extra Light	10	14	23	30	39	47
D'Addario	Custom Light	11	15	22	32	42	52
D'Addario	Light	12	16	24	32	42	53
D'Addario	Medium	13	17	26	35	45	56
Elixir	Extra Light	10	14	23	30	39	47
Elixir	Custom Light	11	15	22	32	42	52
Elixir	Light	12	16	24	32	42	53
Elixir	Light/Medium	12	16	24	35	45	56
Elixir	HD Light	13	17	25	32	42	53
Elixir	Medium	13	17	26	35	45	56
Ernie Ball	Extra Light	10	14	20	28	40	50
Ernie Ball	Light	11	15	22	30	42	52
Ernie Ball	Custom Light	11.5	15.5	22	32	44	54
Ernie Ball	Medium Light	12	16	24	32	44	54
Ernie Ball	Custom Medium	12.5	16.5	24	34	46	56
Ernie Ball	Medium	13	17	26	34	46	56

What this does not do

It compares one flagship acoustic phosphor-bronze line per brand — D'Addario's EJ series, Elixir's Phosphor Bronze NANOWEB line, Ernie Ball's Earthwood Phosphor Bronze line — not every string material or every product each brand sells under a given label.
It does not cover electric guitar strings. The closest evidence gathered while researching this suggests electric "Regular"/10-46 gauge is far more consistently labeled across these same three brands — that is a different market and not verified to the same standard here.
It does not tell you which gauge is right for your guitar or playing style — only what each brand's own current page says a label actually measures.

Runs entirely in your browser. Nothing you type is sent anywhere. The ski wax temperature comparator and the resistance band color comparator found the same shape of problem in two completely different markets — brands sharing a naming vocabulary that doesn't mean the same thing.