D'Addario Acquires Super Sensitive Musical String Company

The strings and accessories company recently acquired Super Sensitive, a family-owned business famous for its Red Label strings

As businesses struggle due to the pandemic, John D'Addario III, the president and CEO of D'Addario, decided to acquire Super-Sensitive after a discussion with their president, Jim Cavanaugh.

Originally founded in 1930, Super-Sensitive Musical String Company creates products that are largely targeted towards student musicians. The acquisition aims to enhance options that D'Addario can provide to music educators and students.

D'Addario intends to honor Super Sensitive's history and maintain the integrity of the company's original products to ensure that customers can continue to use the brand that they know and trust.

"The acquisition of Super-Sensitive enables D’Addario to expand its leadership role in string-making," D'Addario told The Violin Channel. "We share Super-Sensitive’s passion for the orchestral string industry, and we found a kinship in both being based in the United States — in a lot of ways, D’Addario is a natural home for the Super Sensitive family of brands.

"D’Addario is committed to building on Super-Sensitive’s long-standing legacy, particularly with Red Label Strings and rosin. One of the most interesting parts of this process was also the most challenging: bringing production from their factory in Florida to our string factory in New York (especially while keeping tight safety protocols in place due to COVID-19!).

"Fortunately, this was also an opportunity to look at Super-Sensitive’s string-making operation, from top-to-bottom, and examine how to offer the best possible experience for musicians. In some cases, we’ve changed very little about how the product was made; we also took the opportunity to make incremental improvements where it made sense.

"Continuous improvement is a core D’Addario value, and one that musicians also understand — almost everything can be made better, from a product’s performance to a manufacturing process. I think the orchestral community will really enjoy what we’ve created."