Russell Letson
Member
Thing about these string, um, threads is this--
Think about the variables involved here: The individual guitar (even across the same body size/type, builder, and build formula); the player (hands and ears, desired feeling and sound); the demands made by the kind of music played (not individual tunes but genres, e.g. bluegrass vs. Celtic fingerstyle vs. Delta blues, etc.). And there might be more I'm missing.
Given all these factors, the question of "which string?" is always going to be "it depends." How do your hands need to feel? How much effort does it take to get the sound you want? For that matter, exactly what is the sound being chased, and how good are your ears? (Mine are 73 years old and have the restricted frequency response that accompanies that age.)
There is no single answer to "Which strings are best?", especially when the rest of the question is "for this particular guitar" and "played by me." There might be broadly agreed-upon principles--if you're playing bluegrass on a dread, you probably want a heavier set; acoustic archtops don't speak optimally with light-gauge sets; bluesy bending is going to be tough with mediums; and so on. But I'll bet for every one of those, there will be counter-examples that work, at least for particular players. (Stevie Ray Vaughn famously used heavy strings on his Strat. Bucky and John Pizzarelli use LaBella tape-wounds on their archtops.)
Think about the variables involved here: The individual guitar (even across the same body size/type, builder, and build formula); the player (hands and ears, desired feeling and sound); the demands made by the kind of music played (not individual tunes but genres, e.g. bluegrass vs. Celtic fingerstyle vs. Delta blues, etc.). And there might be more I'm missing.
Given all these factors, the question of "which string?" is always going to be "it depends." How do your hands need to feel? How much effort does it take to get the sound you want? For that matter, exactly what is the sound being chased, and how good are your ears? (Mine are 73 years old and have the restricted frequency response that accompanies that age.)
There is no single answer to "Which strings are best?", especially when the rest of the question is "for this particular guitar" and "played by me." There might be broadly agreed-upon principles--if you're playing bluegrass on a dread, you probably want a heavier set; acoustic archtops don't speak optimally with light-gauge sets; bluesy bending is going to be tough with mediums; and so on. But I'll bet for every one of those, there will be counter-examples that work, at least for particular players. (Stevie Ray Vaughn famously used heavy strings on his Strat. Bucky and John Pizzarelli use LaBella tape-wounds on their archtops.)
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