Unless you play air guitar exclusively, you’ll know that guitars need strings! The Music Spot has what you need – strings for guitars. We sell all the top brands, such as Elixir, Fender, Ernie Ball, Darco, Martin, D’Addario, Jim Dunlop, GHS, Thomastik, Augustine and Aquila. We also sell coated strings, classical guitar strings, bass guitar strings, 12 string guitar strings, mandolin strings, banjo strings, violin strings, viola strings, cello strings, double bass strings and ukulele strings.

A Short History Of  Modern Guitar Strings (and then some!)

Until around the mid 1960′s, custom gauge guitar strings were scarce or non-existent. Players constantly modified the standard available sets, usually heavy, medium and light, to suit their own playing style. Plain G strings, a must for bending notes in blues and rock styles, rather than the stiffer wound strings (as currently found in most acoustic guitar sets) were not available, so players either used the plain B string in place of the wound G (and usually plain E strings in place of the heavier plain B string), or resorted to using banjo strings to get the flexibility they needed.

As a youngster playing along with my blues records, I discovered this trick by accident. One day, I broke the wound G string and not having a replacement, I had to use a spare B string. Wow! What a revelation! Suddenly, I could play all those bent notes and get that vibrato I heard on those old blues tunes. It wasn’t long after that that I discovered that some string manufacturers were starting to make available light gauge string sets for electric guitars and within another couple of years the choice of available gauges expanded greatly.

These days, because of the popularity of  “dropped” tunings pioneered by players of  heavier and metal styles, the range of string sets is even larger. Ernie Ball, for example, well known for the many varieties of their “Slinky” string sets, now proudly produce the “Beefy Slinky” and the humorously named “Not Even Slinky” sets for this style of music.

In the past, many blues and rock players such as the late Stevie Ray Vaughan and earlier guitarists used to replace the bottom three strings with a heavier gauge than usual to get more bottom end punch. The legendary Jimi Hendrix was also said to have used at least a heavy bottom E string.  Now the “skinny top, heavy bottom” sets are readily available as standard. They are exceptionally good with single coil pickup equipped guitars. Readily available gauges include 9 – 46 (as opposed to regular 9 – 42) and 10 – 52 (as opposed to regular 10 – 46) sets, produced by most popular manufacturers.

Slide Guitar: If you have a guitar singled out for slide duties only, usually tuned to a popular open tuning such as open G or open A, it’s always a good idea to fit the heaviest gauge strings you can find, or, at least the heaviest gauge you feel your guitar neck will handle, depending on your tuning. Bear in mind that Open A, being a whole tone higher than Open G tuning, will exert a lot more tension on the neck and body of your guitar.

There are two reasons for using heavy gauge strings for slide guitar. One is for tuning stability and the other is for that all important tone. Big strings produce big tone, it’s as simple as that. If you don’t use your slide guitar for normal playing and bending strings, you can get away with using heavy strings. In fact, most players find that using the heaviest gauge strings you can handle on any guitar will make it easier to get that big sound. Of course, you need to be able to bend those strings without breaking your fingers, so a compromise between tone and playability is the goal.

Because different string brands vary in the way they sound, feel and last, you need to try various brands and sets to find your favourites. Taking advice from gigging players is always a good idea, as is experimenting and research. That’s why good music stores like The Music Spot carry a wide range of strings for guitars. As they say, it’s  “horses for courses.”

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