Dave Grohl's guitar strings: the Foo Fighters rig, sourced

Dave Grohl drummed in Nirvana from 1990 until Kurt Cobain's death in 1994, then founded Foo Fighters that same year, writing and playing every instrument on the band's self-titled 1995 debut himself. He's fronted the band as singer and lead guitarist ever since, across nine studio albums and three decades of arena and stadium shows. His full drumming history, from Nirvana through Foo Fighters session work, is covered on his drummer profile; this page covers the guitar side: what he plays, and what his tech does to make it survive him.

Grohl came to guitar and rhythm songwriting from behind a drum kit, and it shows. His rhythm parts sit on a hard, percussive attack more than intricate voicings, which is part of why his tech has to reinforce the low strings just to keep them from snapping.

A D'Addario EXL115 base set with the bottom two strings swapped for a heavier .042 and .060, on a 1967 Gibson Trini Lopez in the studio and a Gibson DG-335 signature model on stage, through a Vox AC30 and a Mesa/Boogie Dual Rectifier.

The custom low-string swap isn't a stock, purchasable set: it's two single strings added on top of a stock EXL115 pack. D'Addario's EXL115 is the closest thing you can buy off the shelf: Buy on Amazon.

Grohl's documented electric set starts as a stock D'Addario EXL115, the Blues/Jazz Rock gauge at .011, .014, .018, .028, .038, .049. What actually ends up on his guitars is different. Guitar tech Joe Beebe has described the modification directly:

I use D'Addario EXL 115s, but I throw the bottom two strings away and I replace them with a .42 for the A-string and a .60 for the E-string.

That's a jump from .038 to .042 on the A string and from .049 to .060 on the low E, while the top four strings (.011, .014, .018, .028) stay stock. Beebe's explanation for the swap is blunt:

He is such a hard player, he's a chainsaw live! He was breaking strings a lot, so I had to beef up the gauges a bunch and I also have to raise the action on him, otherwise he's hitting the strings so hard all it would do is buzz all day long.

Two changes come out of that one problem: heavier low strings that can absorb a harder pick attack without snapping, and raised action so the extra string energy doesn't just rattle against the frets. Neither change is subtle. It's a rig built around a specific, documented playing problem rather than a tone preference.

Grohl learned guitar and songwriting after years behind a drum kit, and his right hand still plays like one. A drummer's strike doesn't taper off for a delicate passage; it's calibrated for a backbeat that has to cut through a full band at arena volume. Carried over to a guitar, that same attack chews through standard-gauge strings fast, which is exactly the failure mode Beebe describes fixing.

The guitar side of the story runs on the same logic. The 1967 Trini Lopez is Grohl's own "most prized possession" and most-recorded instrument, and by his own account it has been kept largely out of touring conditions since he bought it: early live years ran through Les Pauls, SGs, and a battered black Explorer instead. When Gibson built him a signature model in 2007, it didn't just copy the Trini Lopez's look. It replaced the original's vintage trapeze tailpiece with a modern Tune-o-Matic and stopbar bridge, a small but real durability upgrade for a guitar meant to survive a touring schedule the original never had to.

Heavier low strings and a road-hardened bridge are the same instinct pointed at two different problems: keep the gear working under a player who hits harder than most rigs are built for.

Three things across the Foo Fighters catalog you can identify as Grohl's:

1. Percussive rhythm attack. Grohl's guitar strumming is loud and downstroke-heavy, closer to a drummer hitting a snare than a guitarist finessing dynamics. It's the same instinct that forces his tech to run heavier low strings just to keep them intact.

2. Verse-to-chorus dynamic lift. Foo Fighters songs frequently build from a tighter, palm-muted verse into a wide-open, full-strum chorus, a structural device that mirrors the loud-quiet dynamics he played behind in Nirvana, now written into his own guitar parts instead of just his drumming.

3. Hook-first songwriting. Grohl writes choruses built around a single, immediately singable line ("Everlong," "My Hero," "Learn to Fly"), a pop-song instinct layered on top of hard-rock volume that's a big part of why Foo Fighters crossed over to stadium audiences beyond the alternative-rock lane Nirvana defined.

The core electric stable, sourced from Ground Guitar's archive and Guitar World's 2024 feature on Grohl's collection.

The purchasable base set, and the modification his tech makes on top of it.