Julian Lage's guitar strings: D'Addario flatwounds on a Telecaster, not an archtop

Julian Lage is a jazz guitarist and composer who has spent three decades being, as Guitar World put it, "very likely your favorite guitarist's favorite guitarist." He was a child prodigy: playing at five, performing publicly at six, sitting in with Carlos Santana at eight, and appearing on the 2000 Grammy Awards telecast at twelve, all of it documented in the 1996 short film Jules at Eight.

He graduated from Berklee College of Music in 2008 and released his debut album, Sounding Point, in 2009 on EmArcy, a Grammy nominee for Best Contemporary Jazz Album. In 2021 he signed to Blue Note Records, releasing Squint (2021), View with a Room (2022, featuring Bill Frisell), The Layers (2023), Speak to Me (2024), and Scenes from Above (2026). He teaches guitar and ensembles at The New School's School of Jazz and Contemporary Music in New York.

In June 2026, without any announcement from either camp, Lage started turning up in Bob Dylan's touring band, replacing longtime guitarist Doug Lancio. It's the highest-profile gig of his career, and true to form, he never mentioned it was coming.

Most jazz guitarists who reach for a flatwound set play it on a hollow-body archtop, the Wes Montgomery and Jim Hall lineage. Lage's main touring guitar is a Telecaster-style solidbody. That's the real information gap in most coverage of him. Outlets that mention his gear tend to stop at the surface-level observation that a jazz player owns a Tele, without connecting it to the strings. Outlets that cover his strings rarely explain why a jazz player picked a twang machine in the first place.

Lage answered that directly in a 2016 Fretboard Journal interview, describing his relationship to a '54 Blackguard Tele he'd bought a couple years earlier: "I have so much respect for the lineage, I'd be very honored to be considered someone who plays a Tele." He drew a straight line from that guitar to his acoustic playing in the same interview: "On the surface there could not be more difference between a 1930s Martin and a Blackguard Tele... but there is a fundamental resonance." The Telecaster's clarity, not the archtop's warmth-first voicing, is the sound he's chasing. The flatwound strings soften the Tele's usual bite without changing the guitar's underlying directness.

Four instruments across his electric and acoustic work, sourced from his 2023 Premier Guitar Rig Rundown and his own site.

Collings' own current spec sheet for the production 470 JL, the model Lage co-designed and plays.

That last row is the wrinkle: it's a roundwound set, straight from Collings' spec sheet. Lage's own account of his personal 470 JL, given directly to Premier Guitar, names a flatwound set at the same gauge instead. Both are real, sourced claims that describe two different things: the guitar as it ships from the factory, and the guitar as Lage actually strings it on tour.

D'Addario XL Chromes ECG24, .011-.050 Jazz Light, is the set Lage strings his Nachocaster with, per his own account to Premier Guitar. He runs it with one deliberate change: swapping the stock wound .022 G for an unwound .020, trading a little low-end warmth on that string for the ability to bend it, the same logic John Scofield applies to his own custom D'Addario set.

Julian Lage Approved

D'Addario

XL Chromes ECG24 Flat Wound, Jazz Light (.011–.050)

.011 – .050

Price tier: $$

Why this one: The flatwound set Lage strings his primary touring Telecaster with, per his own 2023 Premier Guitar interview. He swaps the stock wound G for an unwound .020 for extra bend.

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His Collings 470 JL is where the sourcing gets genuinely messy, and we're not going to paper over it. Premier Guitar's 2023 rig rundown reports that Lage strings his 470 JL with ".011-.049 D'Addario flatwounds." Collings' own current spec sheet for the 470 JL lists the factory-ships string as D'Addario NYXL1149, a roundwound set, at that identical .011-.049 gauge. Same gauge, different construction, two different primary sources. Both readings are plausible. Collings may ship the guitar with one string family while Lage, playing his own personal instrument on tour, strings it with another. We're reporting Premier Guitar's account of Lage's own guitar as the more reliable read on what he actually plays. The factory spec still gets flagged here as a real, sourced, conflicting data point, not quietly dropped.

Either way, flatwound strings are the deliberate outlier here. A flatwound set trades brightness and sustain for smoothness and reduced finger noise, the classic jazz trade. It's not a beginner default, and it's not the loudest, most cutting option on a stage. It's a tone choice, and on a Telecaster instead of an archtop, an unusual one.

In mid-June 2026, Lage began appearing in Bob Dylan's touring band without any announcement, taking over from guitarist Doug Lancio, who'd held the chair since 2021's Rough and Rowdy Ways tour. Per Guitar World, a Dylan spokesperson couldn't confirm to the Los Angeles Times whether the pairing is a short-term fill-in or something longer. Lage didn't mention it was coming in a Guitar World interview conducted just weeks earlier.

It's a strange stage for a player this deep into jazz circles, precisely because it's such a mainstream one. As Guitar World put it, Lage is "very likely your favorite guitarist's favorite guitarist," respected inside the profession far more than he's known outside it. His rig for the gig hasn't been independently documented yet. The Nachocaster and Collings 470 JL remain his most recently confirmed main instruments. Our full breakout on the Dylan news covers the setlist and reception in more detail.