Gary Cooper’s guide to choosing the right strings to suit your sound, your style and your instrument

It’s an easy trap to fall into – thinking of guitar strings as just a commodity, like socks or underpants. You find a brand you like and stick with them forever. But while re-thinking your choice of strings won’t turn you into a Steve Vai or Martin Simpson overnight, it could bring about major changes in your sound and style.
So instead of walking in to your local music shop and buying a set of whatever it is you always buy, why not start again from scratch and ask yourself whether it might be time to play around a little? You don't need a PhD in Stringology to ask the right questions but a basic understanding will help. Where to start? Well, how about gauge?

11/04/2008

Gauging reactions
String gauges are measured according to thickness, in thousands of an inch – so a top E ‘10’ gauge string measures ten thousandths of an inch and a low E ‘42’ measures 42 thou. The convention has grown up of naming entire sets according to the thickness of the top strings, so guitarists will often ask for ‘a set of nines’ or a ‘set of tens’ – which is ok as far as it goes, but can lead to some surprises if you’re trying a different brand, as manufacturers balance their sets differently and one company’s set of ‘tens’ could have a different gauges of lower strings than another’s. That difference might be just a few thou on a couple of strings, but you might be surprised how unusual it can feel.
So which gauge do you go for? We need to differentiate here between electric and acoustic guitars. Not only do their strings produce sound in quite different ways (one interacting with a pickup, the other generating an acoustic tone) but they are frequently made of different materials – and there are more complicated issues of tension to bear in mind with acoustic guitar strings, so let’s start with electric sets.

The light brigade
Generally speaking, a top E of 008 (ie eight thou) is about as light a gauge as it is feasible to use on an electric guitar. Basing a set around that, the leading US manufacturer D’Addario, for example, offers what it calls an ‘Extra-Super Light’ set of nickel plated steel strings with the succeeding strings measuring 010, 015, 021, 030 and 038. That’s a pretty typical ultra-light set for widdly electric guitar soloing. It’s also quite a useful set for beginners, with soft fingertips and, as yet, limited muscle strength. As these lighter strings are easier to bend and a cause lot less wear on your fingertips, why doesn’t everybody use them? Well, there are several reasons but the most important is tuning. A set as light as this requires a pretty delicate touch. Simply because an ultra-light string is easy to bend also means it is easy to bend by mistake, and a chord can sound really messy if some notes are accidentally sharp because they move too easily beneath your fingers. If you’re experiencing tuning problems and you use strings this light, you might just have found out why.
For that reason, a lot of players tend to creep up at least one gauge. A set of ‘nines’ (D’Addario would call these ‘Super Lights’, as would Rotosound) might offer 009, 011, 016, 024, 032, 042 and are typical of most makers’ ‘super light’ sets.

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