STRING THEORY
Having played acoustic and electric guitar for around 55 years (and been a teacher for 20 years) I’ve been fortunate to have played nearly every make and model of guitar. What I’ve found, not surprisingly, as they are made of a variable material (wood), is that they are all different. And these differences translate into how they feel and respond to different string gauges.
Historically, I was never happy with how my guitars played so I set out to learn how to set them up and tweak them to my personal preferences. Because
I was an industrial chemist for many years, taking a structured approach to action, neck relief, pickup heights, intonation, etc, was a straightforward process. That said, even though I’d set up two guitars to the same specifications, they were not quite the same with regard to string tension. Clearly, there was another factor at play and logically it was to do with the wood they were made from.
By way of an example, I have a Mexican Telecaster set up identically to a Japanese Telecaster. The Mexican Tele with 0.009-0.042 strings feels very slinky and easy to play, while the Japanese Tele (which has slightly lower frets) is hard work with nines. Swapping the Japanese Tele to 0.008-0.038s transforms it completely – easy to play and with great response. A totally different guitar. A second example is a 2011 Gibson SG Junior I have. With 0.010-0.046 strings on, this guitar has beautiful sustain and resonance, but with nines it’s lifeless by comparison.
So, from experience, I would say that as a guitarist you need to consider what’s the optimum string gauge for your particular guitar. The balancing point is that you also have to consider what is the optimum string gauge for you. Colin Berrido, via email Thanks for those insights, Colin. They certainly chime with our experience. We once had an office Strat that felt a bit stiff and unyielding with a standard set of 0.010-0.046 strings on it. A set of Curt Mangan 0.009.5-0.044 strings arrived in the office and we fitted them more out of curiosity than anything else. Voila, the guitar played like the proverbial butter and sounded fantastic. So even a relatively small change in string type can yield a big difference. It’s certainly something we’d recommend being your first port of call if you’re not quite happy with the feel and indeed the tone of your guitar, before making more expensive mods. And, as you rightly say, you have to find out what suits your specific instrument. Rules of thumb will help you guess what might work, but you won’t know until you try different gauges and sets, and crack the code for that particular guitar.