Buying Replacement Strings For Your Guitar

If you play the guitar, an unfortunate fact of life is that you will have to replace

your strings on a fairly regular basis for one reason or another.

You should always have a set or two of extra strings in case they are needed. If your strings are old and one breaks, you should replace all of the strings - not just the one that broke. If the strings are new or relatively so, and one breaks, just replace the one that broke. But what kind of strings should you buy? Let's talk about guitar strings in a general sense.

When you go to a store to buy strings, you will be faced with many choices. Some sets are expensive, some ar cheap, and some are in between as far as price is concerned. There are also lots of different sizes, or gauges. Let's talk about price first.

If you are a beginning guitarist, you don't need to spend mega-bucks on super-duper quality strings. On the other hand, unless a certain brand is on sale, string sets that are cheap are usually so for a reason. Find something in-between. Also, make sure that you buy the type of string set that is right for your guitar. If you have an acoustic guitar, buy an acoustic set. If you have an electric guitar, buy a set for electric guitars.

About the size, or gauge - Do NOT buy heavy or medium gauge strings. Buy light gauge strings. Electric sets can go down to really, really light. You don't want these either - at least right now. These types of sets are for experienced lead guitarists who do a lot of "bending". The problem with these strings is that they are so light that they are difficult to keep in tune. Also with these super light gauge strings, your left hand technique better be perfect, otherwise when you go to play chords, they will sound out of tune.

For an acoustic guitar, buy either light gauge, or extra light.

Another way to look at this is to think in terms of the first "E" string. That's how the string sets are sold. A good first string gauge for an electric would be either a "9 gauge" or a "10 gauge". For an acoustic, think 10,11 or 12 gauge. Although you will sometimes hear lead guitar coming from an acoustic, usually an acoustic is a rhythm instrument - so you need a certain amount of stability. You don't want to go too light - at least not until you are more experienced. If you buy heavier gauge strings, you will put too much tension on the neck of the guitar, which could make it warp. That would be bad - and possibly expensive to fix.

by: James Emery Vigh

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