Ed Sheeran's guitar strings: the Elixir Nanoweb 80/20 Bronze setup, sourced

Ed Sheeran is an English singer-songwriter born February 17, 1991 in Halifax, West Yorkshire, and raised in Framlingham, Suffolk. He started writing songs around age eleven and released his first self-recorded EP, Spinning Man, at thirteen. After moving to London in 2008 and building a following through relentless small-venue gigging and early YouTube uploads, he signed with Asylum Records in 2011.

His debut album, + ("Plus"), topped the UK charts that September. Every album since, x ("Multiply," 2014), ÷ ("Divide," 2017), = ("Equals," 2021), − ("Subtract," 2023), and Autumn Variations (2023) on his own Gingerbread Man Records, has repeated that success. He's sold 200 million records worldwide and was the world's best-selling artist of 2017.

What makes Sheeran useful to study as a guitarist is how little gear his sound actually depends on. Most of his catalog is one guitarist, one small-body acoustic, a loop pedal, and a straightforward string setup, built almost entirely around vocal-forward songwriting and rhythmic strumming rather than tone-chasing. That simplicity is exactly why beginner acoustic players search out his rig.

One string setup has outlasted three guitar eras.

Sheeran's early gigging years ran on the Martin LX1E, a "Little Martin" with a high-pressure-laminate body, spruce top, and a 23-inch scale, noticeably shorter than a standard 25-inch acoustic. He nicknamed his early LX1 and LX1E guitars "Cyril" and "Nigel," and the model became so central to his sound that Martin built him signature editions tied to his first three albums: LX1E Plus, Multiply, and Divide. Those signature editions are now discontinued, but per Guitar.com's own 2024 reporting, the standard LX1E remains part of Martin's active catalog today.

In 2014, Snow Patrol's Gary Lightbody gifted Sheeran a custom-built acoustic made by Northern Irish luthier George Lowden, the smallest guitar Lowden had built at the time. Sheeran was impressed enough that he asked Lowden to build Lightbody an electric guitar in return, and the two struck up a partnership. At the 2019 NAMM Show, they announced Sheeran by Lowden, a standalone brand aiming to bring Lowden's build quality to a more affordable price point. Sheeran has played Sheeran by Lowden guitars almost exclusively since, including signature editions tied to Subtract, Equals, and Autumn Variations, and a 2024 Stadium Edition built as an exact replica of his personal touring guitar for the Mathematics Tour.

Across all three eras, the strings haven't changed: Elixir Nanoweb 80/20 Bronze in Light gauge.

Shorter scale length means lower string tension at the same pitch and gauge, and Sheeran's guitars run meaningfully shorter than a standard dreadnought.

Lower tension makes strings feel slinkier under the fretting hand, which suits Sheeran's percussive strumming, palm-muted rhythm work, and heavy reliance on a capo. It also tends to produce a warmer, less bright tone than the same strings at full tension. Per Range of Sounds' own analysis, that's exactly why the bright 80/20 bronze alloy, the brightest option in Elixir's acoustic lineup, is doing real work here: it pushes back against the shorter scale's natural warmth instead of stacking with it, landing on a tone that reads as present and punchy rather than dull or overly mellow.

It's a case where two choices that individually pull toward opposite ends, a warm-leaning short scale and a bright-leaning string alloy, cancel out into a balanced middle. Swap in a warmer phosphor bronze set on the same guitar and the tone likely shifts noticeably darker.

The one constant across every guitar he's played on record.