GDAD, especially for the folk friendly keys of D and G, and allows you to play chords and inversions with ease going right up the neck to way beyond the twelth fret (a trademark of James Fagan). Unison stringing is best if you switch from accompaniment to melody. GDAD allows you you to play some theoretically outrageous chords and it sill sounds good, I suppose it is because of that high D ringing away all the time! But for the beginner, what more do you need? One finger for a D, one for a G and 2 for an A (alright 3 really). Add to that the ambiguity of the chord, is it major or minor? It will do for both (sometimes)! ADAD (or CGCG) is interesting too, but I leave that to the guitar as CGCGCD - courtesy of Gavin Davenport.

I use the same gauge strings on my guitar and bouzouki so I buy several sets of Elixir PB nanos and then put each gauge into a separate box with labels showing how many is left (sad I know). So 56, 45, 35, 26, 17 and 13 for guitar, 45, 35, 17 and 13 for bouzouki.