I've never been a fan of Martin strings, but for a while used the Martin Bronze strings. The Marquis sound great for about 10 minutes! The Martin Bronze last maybe a few days longer!

Some people (like me, for example) have some chemical reaction with strings, especially the phosphur alloys - that causes them to dull in minutes - in my case (and I mean that literally). So I used the coated strings for a while; Elixers. They didn't sound great, but they sounded pretty good and would sound pretty good for a while.

Recently I've switched again, this time to Newtone MasterClass Strings (here's a Mudcat thread re: Newtone Strings). Rick Fielding turned me on to these strings when I was in Toronto a couple summers ago, and it took a while to convince me (because in the hot weather I still burn 'em up pretty quickly) BUT; these are truly great sounding strings, and they last. They say their advantage is that they are wound around a round core, whereas most strings are wound around a hex core (and hex cores provide plenty of space for debris to build up). That may be so ... all I know is they sounds excellent and, at least in the cool weather, I can keep 'em on for more the a couple of weeks of hard playing.

I bought them on-line in bulk from this site. Very good service, very good price, small business, nice lady (we talked on the phone briefly, she was helpful).

I think there are a few quality alternatives to Martin guitar strings. In fact, I've always noticed that Martin Guitars, when they're in the new guitar shop hanging on the display, almost always sound terrible, because their strings are bad!! If Martin took my advice, they'd ship them with Elixers or Newtone, or something that would stand up to time, and many hands playing ...

;-)