Nita Strauss's guitar strings: the D'Addario NYXL .010–.046 rig, sourced
Documented strings and gear for guitarist Nita Strauss: D'Addario NYXL .010 to .046, her Ibanez JIVA10 signature, and the rig she runs with Alice Cooper and solo. Sourced.
Alice Cooper / Solo · reviewed by the Change Your Strings editorial team ·
Nita Strauss runs D'Addario NYXL nickel-wound strings in Regular Light .010 to .046, the standard off-the-shelf set, on her Ibanez JIVA10 signature and backup S6570Q Prestige. She plays mostly in E standard with Alice Cooper and on her solo records, dropping lower when a song calls for it. The NYXL tuning stability suits her heavy whammy use, aggressive bends, and a relentless touring schedule.
Who Nita Strauss is
Nita Strauss (born December 7, 1986, in Los Angeles) is one of the most visible rock guitarists of her generation. She came up through the Iron Maiden tribute band The Iron Maidens, then in 2014 was hired as Alice Cooper's touring guitarist, replacing Orianthi. In January 2018 she became the first woman to get her own Ibanez signature model, the JIVA10, and later that year released her debut solo instrumental album, Controlled Chaos, funded by a Kickstarter that blew past its goal.
Her solo career put her on the map beyond the sideman role: she became the first female solo rock artist in decades to top Billboard's Mainstream Rock chart. She stepped away from Alice Cooper in 2022 to tour with Demi Lovato, returned to the Cooper band in 2023, and released her second solo record The Call of the Void that same year. In 2026 she took a break to welcome her first child and handpicked guitarist Anna Cara to fill in for her, a transition Guitar World covered in detail. And yes, she is a descendant of the Austrian composer Johann Strauss.
What she plays
The headline is simple, and worth stating plainly because it surprises people: Nita Strauss plays a stock, off-the-shelf string set. Premier Guitar's Rig Rundown documents her guitars wearing D'Addario NYXL .010 to .046, the standard Regular Light gauge, with no special signature wind or custom gauge. The same set a beginner can buy for fifteen dollars is the set she takes on stadium stages.
She runs it on her Ibanez JIVA10 signature and a backup Ibanez S6570Q Prestige, mostly in E standard. She has said the NYXL line gives her the balance and tone she wants for heavy music while still handling lower tunings when a song calls for it, so she drops down on selected material rather than carrying a second guitar in a different gauge. Picks are Grover Allman .60mm. Her solo touring rig is deliberately tiny: a Boss GT-1000 on the floor for all amp modeling and effects, plus a Shure GLX-D wireless.
Her rig, piece by piece
Strings · Standard rotation
D'Addario NYXL1046 Nickel Wound (.010–.046)
The off-the-shelf NYXL Regular Light set. Reformulated NY Steel core wire and fusion-twist plain strings give D'Addario's claimed 131% greater tuning stability over standard XL, which is what earns it a place on a heavy-whammy, hard-touring rig. No signature gauge, just the stock NYXL1046.
Guitar · Signature, 2018
Ibanez JIVA10 Nita Strauss Signature
The first Ibanez signature model built for a woman, debuted at Winter NAMM 2018. Nyatoh body, quilted maple top, maple and purpleheart neck, ebony fretboard, Edge Zero II double-locking tremolo. The locking trem is the reason the .010 plain strings stay in tune through her dive-bomb passages.
Pickups · DiMarzio
DiMarzio Pandemonium + True Velvet
The JIVA10 carries a pair of her signature Pandemonium humbuckers flanking a True Velvet single-coil in the middle, on a 5-way switch. High output for the saturated lead tone, with the single-coil giving her cleaner in-between voicings. Her backup S6570Q runs a Tone Zone, True Velvet, and Air Norton instead.
Picks + rig · Travel-light
Grover Allman .60mm · Boss GT-1000
Grover Allman .60mm picks, a relatively thin gauge for a shredder, suited to fast alternate picking. On her own tours the whole amp and effects rig is a Boss GT-1000 floor unit plus a Shure GLX-D wireless, which she says has worked everywhere from clubs to stadiums.
Why the .010–.046 NYXL fits her playing
On a 25.5-inch Ibanez scale, .010 to .046 sits at familiar medium-light tension: tight enough for percussive rhythm chugs, loose enough for the wide bends and fast legato that define her lead voice. The interesting part is the metallurgy, not the gauge. D'Addario's NY Steel core and the reformulated wrap process are built for one thing she leans on hard: tuning stability under abuse.
A guitarist who lives on an Edge Zero II double-locking tremolo and bends aggressively is exactly the use case NYXL was designed around. The locking nut and trem handle the gross tuning stability; the string metallurgy keeps individual notes from drifting flat after a hard bend or a dive. For a player running a relentless touring schedule, that translates to fewer string changes and fewer dead-string nights. It is also a quietly democratic fact worth repeating: there is no secret gauge here. Buy the stock NYXL1046, set your guitar up well, and you are on the same strings she is. Curious who else runs this set? See who plays NYXL1046.
If you want her setup
The documented set is D'Addario NYXL Regular Light .010 to .046. Start there.
NYXL1046 Nickel Wound (.010–.046)
Why this one: Nita Strauss's documented set per Premier Guitar's Rig Rundown. Stock NYXL Regular Light, no signature gauge. The tuning stability is what suits a heavy-whammy, hard-touring rig.