Monday 16 April 2012

Strings and things



Most people will end up using guitar strings for their cigar box guitar. I think its worth spending some time looking at the types of strings that are an available. There are basically three types of guitar strings. Electric, acoustic and classical


You can put any on you cigar box guitar but there are a few things to know about them. Electric and acoustic strings are metal, Classical strings are nylon. metal strings have more sustain and are louder, they may be harder to fret though but if you’re planning on using the guitar for slide style playing this may not be an issue. Nylon or classical strings are usually slightly cheaper and will have less volume and sustain
Buying a pack of six strings maybe a good place to get your hands on some strings for your guitar. 

If you buy a set of six strings in any of the types discussed you will notice the manufacture of the strings will be different for different strings. The E A D strings will be wound meaning they have a core and then another string is wound round this core to make the string diameter bigger. The G B E strings will be unwound. This means they will just be a string made out of the relevant material.



So what does that mean to the cigar box guitar player? Well for me I do not like wound strings because of the noise or sensation they make when sliding from note to note. The unwound strings do not make this noise. This is just personal taste but may be worth considering.

Finally another approach is to use this site http://www.strothers.com/string_choice.htm
If you know you scale length (distance from bridge to nut) you can calculated the correct gauge for you guitar depending on how you want it tuned
Buy my guitars on line 
http://darrenscigarboxguitars.ecrater.co.uk/

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