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Pick New Strings for Your Acoustic Guitar

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Part of the video series: How to Change the Strings on an Acoustic Guitar

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Summary: Learn how and when to pick new strings for your acoustic guitar to ensure that your instrument will remain in tune and play music beautifully in this free video series.

Views: 619 | Tags: guitar, strings, scales, theory, change, tuning, acoustic, pick

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About the Expert

Matt Graham Matt Graham is a graduate from Texas A&M University and pursuing a Graduate degree from the University of Texas. He also has a love for cooking and not much m... read more

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Video Transcript

Pick New Strings for Your Acoustic Guitar

MATT GRAHAM: Now I'd like to talk a little bit about choosing the right set of strings to replace your old strings. If you know what strings were on your guitar before, there's a good chance that they were a good match for that guitar. Some companies even recommend, you know, they'll have sometimes even written in the sound hole, "Only use light-gauge string guitars." Now, when I say light gauge, I'm referring to the diameter of the string. So if I was holding a big guitar string right here, this would be a heavy-gauge string. It would have a larger diameter. This will be a lighter-gauge string, and it would have a smaller diameter. When you buy a set of strings they usually comes in a box like this or in some vinyl packaging, and on the back it has listed the gauges of each string in the set. Now, some companies will refer to the gauge in terms of the thickness of the high E string or the thinnest string. And for instance, this medium-gauge set has a thickness on the high E string of .013 inches. That's, you know, thirteen hundredths of an inch. So anyway, a light-gauge set of acoustic guitar strings would be a high E of around .010. A medium-light set might be .011, but this medium set again has a thickness on the high E string of .013. So the other way companies will label their strings as far as gauge is they'll just say on the front of the package medium or light or medium light. And of course the medium is the thickest down to medium light and then light and sometimes even extra light or super light. So you want to pick strings that fit your ability. If you're a beginner and you're just developing calluses, you'll probably want to go with a light gauge or a medium light gauge string, because these thick diameter strings are going to be tough on your fingers. If you're playing blues or rock on an acoustic guitar and you need to do a lot of bends, so you need strings that have a little more give to them, I recommend a light-gauge string.

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