Strings strings strings…

Guitar strings are funny things.  There are many brands, materials, gauges, types of wrap, coatings, and many different reasons why you may prefer one set to another.  Sure, your favourite musician may have his or her name on the packaging, but are they really right for you and your instrument?

From personal experience getting strings right is important, and makes a massive difference from guitar to guitar particularly in how they feel and respond to how you play.  I may use one set for one guitar, but wouldn’t dream of using that same set on another guitar.

A big thing for me is longevity, or the life of the string.  I recently strung my Ibanez RG3120 with a set of Ernie Ball Regular Slinky strings and they seem to have become ‘chalky’ and tired over the past week or so.  They did ‘feel’ good for the first couple of weeks though…

And I recently reverted back to Gibson strings on my ES175…the D’Addario EXL 11′s I put on there just didn’t feel right – they faded quickly and didn’t bring out the character of the guitar as well.

My quest for my perfect acoustic guitar string was also interesting.  I tried a number of different types of Phosphor-Bronze strings, as well as a number of different ‘coated’ strings.  Eventually I settled on the Elixir Nanoweb string – enough coating for sustained longevity and tone, but thin enough to allow the true character of the string to ring through.

Gauge is another issue altogether.  There is a general feeling that thicker strings provide a better tone – of which I’m not convinced – but after watching Stevie Ray Vaughan play his ridiculously thick strings I noticed the amount of effort and energy he was putting into the movement of them.  This was something I desired – I wanted to have to work a bit harder on my instrument to convey my message.  I’ll concede that my move from 9′s to 10′s wasn’t the giant leap it could’ve been to SRV’s 13′s (I think), but it was sufficient for me to have to alter my approach slightly, and also struggle for a short time, to play as fluently as I had done previously.  The difference in feel was great.  I felt I could play faster, and more importantly, more expressively.  From playing electrics with 9′s and 11′s I have decided that 10′s are a happy medium for my average blues/rock/funk session.  The process was a very happy one, and I recommend it to anyone.

That is of course, all my own opinion.  And what I’ve learnt from dealing with an even broader range of strings than those already mentioned, is that some musicians will have their favorite strings for particular situations, and others won’t really know why they use the strings they do.

To conclude I recommend two things to both types of musician – try out other string types to see what else is out there – even if you go back to the string with which you started, at least you’ll know why you like it. And change your strings as often as is practical as this will provide you with as pure a platform possible to express yourself.

A wide range of electric and acoustic guitar, bass, banjo, ukelele strings and many more is available through the amusic.co.uk online store.  Stocked brands include Rotosound, D’Addario, Elixir, Fender, Martin, Ernie Ball, Gibson and others.

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