Toneline Strings

From Montreal stages to world tours

Long before joining a world‑touring show, founder Patrick Kelly was already an accomplished musician in Montréal with a solid career as a backup guitarist. When he joined that global production, he stayed on the road for the next 13 years as its guitarist. With no backline crew, he became fully responsible for maintaining his gear — changing the strings on six guitars every week.

Turning curiosity into myth‑busting

Because he had a dedicated maintenance budget, he started buying every string brand he could find to see which ones truly delivered on their promises. Strings are marketed like cereal boxes — bright packaging and bold claims that you’ll sound like the endorsed guitar hero. They advertise durability, sustain, or special alloys supposedly offering more smoothness, clarity, or punch.

What began as simple curiosity turned into a full‑on investigation to cut through the noise and understand how string companies made their claims. He logged every detail and measurement into spreadsheets — a real myth‑buster’s approach.

From metallurgy class to better sets

To do it properly, he used a custom‑built tension meter, a spectrogram analyzer, a multimeter, and a caliper. His first big discovery came when he graphed the results: tension from string to string was wildly uneven. He has been suspecting this for years.

That inconsistency led him deeper into research. Working late after shows in the band pit his work made him realize there’s more to string feel than marketing language and encouraged him to push his investigation further.

Measuring what really matters

Patrick took a metallurgy class and refined his measurements. Then progressive‑tension string sets started appearing on the market, and even before graphing them,he could feel the improvement instantly. He reverse‑engineered the concept and had OEM partners manufacture custom sets based on his findings. he also worked with boutique string makers who used high‑purity alloys to explore how to combine perfect feel with superior tone.

Building a new kind of string shop

Then the pandemic hit. The tour was suspended for two years, and he returned to Montreal determined to put all the research into practice. He realized that most of the industry still runs on post‑war machinery — huge, deafening, 20‑thousand‑dollar winders optimized for mass production.

That’s when he discovered brushless servo motors.
On a lathe, he aligned two servos face‑to‑face on a single axis running at 4,000 RPM, reached out to the best wire suppliers, and began winding. The result: a silent desktop string‑winding machine. From a small workshop, he launched Toneline Strings in January 2026, leaving his touring life behind.

Where Toneline Strings is now

Today Patrick designs and packages every set myself. Toneline stings come in a classy tin and include 3 string sets made out of the finest metals. The first releases include Gradual Tension Regular Feel, Gradual Tension Tight Feel, and 4 traditional models: 9‑46 and 10‑48 Hybrid Slinky gauges.
More models are on the way, each rooted in the same mission — to make strings that finally feel and sound right.

The simple truth about strings

The key lesson: when you strip away all the marketing, you’re left with six pieces of tempered steel — nothing magical. Strings 1‑3 are tempered steel. Strings 4‑6 also, and they are presented as hexagon or round core wires then wounded with a softer metal alloy wire to obtain lower registers. That outer wrap is what manufacturers love to advertise, but it’s only a fraction of what truly defines how a string performs. It still shapes tone, just not as dramatically as claimed.
Bottom line is that you need to choose strings that will make you enjoy your skill.