Jack White's guitar strings: the Fender Triplecaster and Acoustasonic rig, sourced

Jack White, born John Anthony Gillis in Detroit in 1975, co-founded the White Stripes with Meg White in 1997. The duo's stripped-down blues and garage rock, just guitar, drums, and voice, broke through with 2001's White Blood Cells and peaked commercially with 2003's Elephant, whose lead single "Seven Nation Army" became one of the most recognizable riffs in rock. Wikipedia's own genre tags for White span blues rock, garage rock revival, alternative rock, punk blues, and experimental rock, and Rolling Stone has included him on both its 2010 and 2023 lists of the greatest guitarists of all time.

After the White Stripes split in 2011, White kept moving: the Raconteurs, the Dead Weather, and a solo career starting with 2012's Blunderbuss that has run through 2024's No Name, an album he first distributed as secret unmarked vinyl before its official release. He registered Third Man Records solo in 2001 while still touring with the White Stripes, then turned his attention to building it out as a label starting in 2008. Ben Blackwell and Ben Swank joined as co-owners in 2009. The White Stripes were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in November 2025.

Three current main guitars, three different documented string gauges, all pinned down by Fender's own spec sheets and Premier Guitar's 2024 walk-through of his touring rig.

For years, the standard line on Jack White's strings was that he didn't have one. An older Ground Guitar profile puts it plainly: "Jack is one of the rare people who has no string preferences. He says that he likes to leave this decision to his guitar tech." That framing made sense for a player who rotated through dozens of vintage oddities without much public comment on setup details.

The 2024 Fender signature collection changed that, at least for gauge. Fender's own product pages now list exact factory strings for both new signature guitars, and Premier Guitar's October 2024 rig rundown independently walked through his actual touring instruments guitar by guitar. The two sources agree closely: the Triplecaster runs .010–.046, the custom Jazzmaster runs .011–.049, and the Triplesonic Acoustasonic runs in the .011 to .053 range depending on whether you trust the factory spec or the stage-reported figure. Three guitars, three distinct setups, all serving different roles in the same set.

In September 2024, Fender and White launched a signature line years in the making: the Triplecaster Telecaster, the Triplesonic Acoustasonic Telecaster, and the Pano Verb amplifier. Premier Guitar's rundown, filmed at White's Nashville headquarters with his tech and collaborator Dan Mancini, called the Triplecaster "the culmination of White's career of tinkering, tweaking, and optimizing his favorite pieces of gear."

The Triplecaster earns its name from a three-pickup arrangement built with Fender pickup designer Tim Shaw: a CuNiFe Wide Range humbucker in the neck (inspired by a pickup Shaw built for White's wife's guitar), a P-90-style JW-90 single-coil in the middle, and a custom Jack White humbucker in the bridge. It carries a kill switch, a Bigsby B5 vibrato, a Hipshot Xtender for snapping into drop D, and an arcade-style "Stutter" switch, features that reflect years of White modifying guitars himself before Fender formalized the design.

The Triplesonic Acoustasonic takes a different approach entirely: a Fender and Fishman-designed Acoustic Engine blends a magnetic pickup with an undersaddle transducer, and a three-way switch moves between acoustic, clean electric, and overdriven electric tones from the same instrument. The Pano Verb amplifier is not one amp but two in a single cabinet: independent 20-watt and 50-watt power sections each drive their own speaker (a 15-inch Jensen C15N and a 10-inch Jensen P10R), combining for a 70-watt stereo total. Fender's own copy says the design pulls elements from three of White's vintage amps, a 1964 Vibroverb, a 1960 Vibrasonic, and a 1993 Vibro-King, with the Vibroverb the primary influence.

The Triplecaster's .010–.046 nickel-plated set is a conventional, medium-tension choice for a guitar that already does a lot of unconventional things. With a Bigsby vibrato and a drop-D Hipshot Xtender in play, a lighter gauge keeps bends and vibrato easy and the drop-D detune from fighting the neck too hard, while still driving three different humbucker-class pickups with enough output.

The custom Jazzmaster's slightly heavier .011–.049 makes sense given what's hidden inside it: Mancini built the internals of an Electro-Harmonix Pitchfork pitch-shifting pedal directly into the guitar's body. A touch more string mass and tension helps tracking stay clean when a pitch-shifter is doing real-time interval work on the signal, and Jazzmasters generally reward a slightly heavier top end given their shorter bridge break angle.

The Triplesonic Acoustasonic's Dura-Tone 860CL coated phosphor bronze strings fit its job description: an acoustic-leaning instrument that needs to survive amplification, stage volume, and a demanding tour schedule without going dead fast. Coated strings trade a little brightness for tone life, a fair exchange for a guitar built to do acoustic, clean electric, and overdriven electric duty in the same set.

Three guitars, three different setups. Here's exactly how they compare.