Gut strings, Paris and, later, Lyon.

Savarez dates itself to 1770. Its own history page says that in that year the Savaresse family, arriving from Italy, settled in Paris, where it made hand-rectified gut strings and plain strings and began making wound strings. French Wikipedia, citing a 2018 series on century-old companies in the Lyon daily Le Progrès, gives the same Italian family and the same year. The company is now based in Caluire-et-Cuire, a town on the northern edge of Lyon; we found no source that says when it moved from Paris to the Lyon area, so we give no date for that.

The 1770 date and the family story rest on the company’s own account and on newspaper retellings of it; we found no independent eighteenth-century record. What the public record shows is narrower. France’s national company directory gives 1957 as the creation date of the present company, classes its main activity as the manufacture of musical instruments and puts its workforce in the 10-to-19 band in 2024. Its accounts for 2025 show revenue of about €6.8 million, the same directory says.

Through the nineteenth century the business widened. French Wikipedia, citing Le Progrès, says that by the middle of the century it was also making tennis-racket strings and surgical ligatures — both traditional uses of gut. The company’s timeline says that between 1880 and 1930 it added ranges made with silk, steel, bronze and brass.

Nylon, Django and Alliance.

The company’s timeline puts the “arrival of nylon” under a heading dated 1930, alongside modern grinding, calibrating and testing machinery, and French Wikipedia repeats that it began making nylon strings in 1930. That cannot be literal: English Wikipedia records that the first nylon was made at DuPont in 1935 and announced in 1938, so the entry must cover later years. The timeline dates the strings sold under the Savarez name for classical guitar to 1950, which it calls “the first revolution in the world of the classical guitar”: rectified nylon trebles, basses wound on nylon and, it says, the first sets offered in three tensions. There is a competing claim. English Wikipedia describes Albert Augustine Ltd. of New York — a separate company — as the originator of the nylon classical string, developed with Andrés Segovia and DuPont from 1946. We report both and do not settle which came first.

Its best-documented product is older than its classical line. Savarez says its Argentine strings were “designed for the legendary Django Reinhardt in 1935” and are “the only strings” perfectly suited to Selmer-Maccaferri guitars — the second half a sales claim. Independent sources agree on the association: English Wikipedia’s article on the Selmer guitar says Django-style players traditionally use “light, silver-plated, copper-wound Argentine strings made by Savarez (or copies of these),” and French Wikipedia says they were Reinhardt’s strings of choice.

The company’s other breakthroughs are its own account. It says that in 1990, “after 7 years of research,” it launched Alliance strings, using a composite fibre for trebles — its product pages now call Alliance trebles fluorocarbon — and that in 1996 it introduced Corum basses, wound on a flexible nylon core. French Wikipedia says the fluoropolymer (PVDF) strings were developed in the 1980s with a Japanese maker of fishing nets and, citing a January 2024 Mediapart article on “forever chemicals” in string making, that Savarez then held 80 per cent of the world market for such strings; we could not read the paywalled article. Its newer Cantiga basses use what the company calls a new multifilament core.

Beyond the guitar, the catalogue lists 217 products under names including Corelli for the violin family — Corelli Crystal dates from 1980, the company says, and Solea is newer — Tomatito for flamenco, Léonida for the oud, and lines for banjo, harp and electric guitar. Its featured players include Sharon Isbin and the flamenco guitarist Tomatito, whose English Wikipedia entry says he uses and endorses Savarez strings.

Seven string makers, checked.

Six of the seven guitar-string makers in this guide are American, ranging from a division of a large materials company to small workshops. Elixir strings are sold by W. L. Gore & Associates, the privately held fluoropolymer company of Newark, Delaware, best known for Gore-Tex; Elixir’s contact page gives an address in Elkton, Maryland.

GHS takes its name from its founders, Gould, Holcomb and Solko, who began making strings in 1964; the company says Robert McFee bought it in 1975 and that it remains family-owned, based in Battle Creek, Michigan. DR Strings was founded in 1989 by Mark Dronge, son of the Guild founder Alfred Dronge, and Benzion Rapoport, English Wikipedia says; it is based in Westwood, New Jersey, and says its strings are made in the USA.

Dean Markley began in 1972, when Dean Markley, a Santa Clara, California, music-store owner, started selling his own strings; English Wikipedia now places the company in Glendale, Arizona. Curt Mangan, founded in 2004 by a former Ernie Ball sales and marketing director, says it makes its strings in Cortez, Colorado. Stringjoy says its strings are made in its own facility in Nashville, Tennessee.

The European maker is Savarez, of Caluire-et-Cuire on the edge of Lyon, which dates itself to 1770 and says its strings are handmade in France; it does not publish who owns it.

This guide sets out what can be checked about each brand — who founded it, who owns it, and what it says about where its products are made — and marks clearly what rests only on the company’s own word.

Who owns it, and where the strings are made.

Savarez does not publish who owns it. Its legal notice names the company itself as the website’s owner and Bernard Maillot as publication director; French Wikipedia, citing a company-information site, describes him as chairman of the board. France’s national company directory lists among the company’s directors a holding company named Maillot, also based in Caluire-et-Cuire, and the company’s history page carries a photograph honouring the guitarist Alexandre Lagoya and Charles Maillot, taken for the twentieth anniversary of Savarez strings. That points to a long link with the Maillot name, but we found no published list of shareholders, so we do not call it a family company. Sources also differ on its legal form: the website says “SA,” while the directory records a simplified joint-stock company (SAS).

Two names that might be taken for owners are not. Cantiga is a Savarez range of bass strings, not a company. Augustine is a separate New York string maker, and we found no link between the two. In the United States, Savarez strings have been handled by Córdoba Music Group, which held their exclusive American distribution when Yamaha Guitar Group bought it, Guitariste.com reported in February 2023 — but a distributor is not an owner.

On where its strings are made, Savarez’s Corelli and Solea leaflets say “Fabriqué à la main en France — Handmade in France,” and the directory classes the Caluire company as an instrument manufacturer; we found no independent account of its workshop, so the place of manufacture rests on the company’s word. Its 2022 switch from plastic to card and paper packaging, which it says saved more than six tonnes of plastic, is likewise its own figure.

For a design guide, Savarez shows how a string maker can trade on two and a half centuries of claimed history while its documented story is mostly about materials — gut, nylon and fluorocarbon. Compare Pirastro, another string maker that traces itself to the eighteenth century, and La Bella. For this guide we use a deep burgundy, gut cream and string silver with a serif, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Savarez’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.