Guitar Strings

Well, talking about guitar strings doesn’t have to be all serious business, does it? Now that you know how musical notes are made by guitar strings from the last post, let’s kick back and share a joke.

Some of these are in bad taste, so if you’re sensitive, this one’s not for you.

Why Guitars Are Better Than Women

• Your guitar has a volume knob!
• If you break your guitar’s G-string, it’ll only cost you a buck for a new one.
• You can make your guitar scream as loud as you want without getting the cops involved.
• You can unplug your guitar.
• You can finger your guitar for hours without it complaining that it still wants more.
• Other people can play your guitar without it feeling violated.
• You can finger your guitar in public and get applause, not arrested.
• You can get your guitar in any color you want and no one will care.
• You can make your guitar feel as tight as you want, just by turning a peg.
• If your guitar makes sounds you don’t like, you can retune it.
• You can use four fingers and a thumb at one time on a guitar.
• If your guitar strings are too fat and heavy, you can just get a lighter set.
• You can have a professional adjust your guitar to your liking.
• If you scratch a guitar’s back by accident, it won’t complain when you stop.
• You can go down to the local guitar shop and play every guitar you want for free.
• It’s good to own a guitar that’s stretched out and loose.
• You can get advice on how to play your guitar without feeling inadequate.
• You can rent a guitar without having to worry who rented it before you.
• You can play your guitar with bare fingers and no rubber covering.
• If you’re lucky you’ll get rich playing guitar, but you will never go broke!
• Your guitar doesn’t take half of your stuff when you sell it.
• You can play a guitar every day of the month without getting messy.
• Your guitar doesn’t get jealous when you bring a new one home!

It’s an amazing thing to look at a set of guitar strings, basically a few bits of steel or nylon, and realize that these humble things are what enables a guitarist to produce musical notes, each one different to the next, and furthermore, to produce works of art that make people dance, laugh and cry. I mean, they’re just guitar strings… but they can do all of that?

I guess we all have to thank our guitar strings for enabling us to make, and listen to, fantastic music.

But how do they actually make those tones? How does moving your finger across the fretboard change the note that you hear played? Let’s have a quick look at how guitar strings work, and I say quick because it’s really not that complicated.

Tones are produced by oscillations in air pressure — how slow or fast the air pressure is changing in front of the sound source. We call the speed of those oscillations frequencies. For instance, the frequency of A above middle C is 440 Hz. Hertz (Hz) are cycles per second, which means that to create a tone of A above middle C, the oscillations in air pressure occur at a frequency of 440 in a second.

So, each guitar string has a given frequency based on its length. The longer and thicker it is, the fewer times it oscillates in a second. The fewer oscillations that occur, the deeper the pitch of the tone. Humans are generally considered to start hearing bass frequencies as low as 20 Hz - that’s a mere 20 vibrations in a second. 20 Hz is well below the lowest note of the bass guitar.

It follows that when a guitarist pushes a finger down on guitar strings at a given fret, it effectively shortens the length of the guitar strings. That means that when they’re plucked, it oscillates at a higher frequency, producing a higher pitch.

Although somewhat technical, the way guitar strings produce pitch is pretty simple and easy to grasp — and at least to me, quite fascinating, too!

Gibson’s Robotic Guitar took the guitar-playing world by storm a few months ago. In fact, it even caused a stir with financial magazines like Forbes. The world knew that innovation was taking place in the guitar market.

Why is it so amazing? If you added up the hours of time each guitarist spends tuning up over the course of a few years, the figure would be huge. Tuning can also be a troublesome point for beginners, though that’s not to say they shouldn’t have to learn guitar tuning the old-fashioned way — it’s an essential skill.

The robotic guitar is amazing because it tunes your guitar for you. It even handles a bunch of alternate tunings in addition to good old standard E tuning. A set of robotic pegs twist and turn to pull your guitar strings into tune.

A friend of mine once asked me if this would have any adverse effects on your guitar strings. With all that twisting and turning, could it possibly wear the strings down or even snap them? Presumably, it’s no different to tuning up yourself — but with the robotic guitar, you can retune even faster. Players would be able to switch between standard E tunings and drop D without the extra hassle, and so it stands to reason that you could put your guitar strings under more stress just from overusing the automatic tuner.

If you’re going to be using a Gibson robotic guitar to switch tunings a heck of a lot more than you would do with a standard guitar, I suggest using XXL (extra-extra-light) guitar strings. In my own experience, lighter electric guitar strings can undertake more changes in tension than heavy guitar strings before they wear down and snap.

That said, months down the road, I haven’t yet read any monstrous reviews. None, at least, that say the guitar has a habit of snapping your guitar strings in half. So, I’d trust the guitar to treat your strings well, and if you have any problems with heavy strings, try out extra lights for a while. If you’ve had some experience with the Gibson and can tell us how it has treated your own guitar strings, we’d love to hear from you in the comments.

Guitar strings are one of the most important components of your guitar. Without them, the guitar is just a hunk of wood—and pretty damn quiet, too. There’s a lot more to discuss about guitar strings than the simple, humble buggers would let on—there are steel strings, nylon strings, bass guitar strings, the list goes on. There are different techniques for restringing, for making your strings last longer and sound better, for getting different sounds out of different types of strings.

Oh, and when we’ve got the tips, tricks and techniques out of the way, we’ll still have time for some guitar string reviews, to help you make more informed purchasing decisions. We want to make sure you’ve got the right gear and that’ll it last.

Heck, we could be here all day.

I’ve started this Web site because I see way too many guitarists out there who can do all sorts of crazy things with their guitars, but they still just don’t know all they should know about the most essential part of their instrument. It’s crazy. But it’s not their fault: the amount of information out there on this topic is limited, simply because little wires of steel or nylon can’t be that important, right? Wrong.

So it’s time to make that little oversight of the instrumentalist’s world right. We’re going to make it right, right here, and if you follow along with us you’ll know just as much about guitar strings as I do in no time. And if you ever have an idea that you’d like us to cover or a question about strings that you want answered, be my guest! We’ve got a comments section on each and every post and if you leave your requests there, I’ll get right on them.

This is the first article on GreatGuitarStrings.com, just our way of saying hello to the world and telling everyone: you can learn everything you ever wanted to know about guitar strings right here. Don’t go away, or you might miss a great tip.