Acoustic Guitar String

Always frustrated when standing in front of a bunch of different brand and specs guitar strings? Here's some basic info for rookies~

Although the strings that most acoustic guitars use are commonly called "steel strings" (and they do have steel cores), the wound strings will almost always be wound with bronze. Acoustic guitar strings are either phosphor bronze, which has a warm tone and tends to keep its tone a little longer, or 80/20 bronze, which sounds a bit brighter and loses its brightness a bit faster. Because of this, the wound acoustic strings are not steel colored, but instead appear different shades of gold, which is the natural color of bronze.

First of all, the type of string:

80/20 Bronze

80/20 Bronze is a common type of acoustic guitar string, the 80/20 is the proportion of the alloy. The colour is golden, deliver a very bright sound. You can also see 85/15 bronze on the market.

Phospor Bronze

This is also a very common type of string. The colour is more like a copper colour, compare with 80/20 bronze string, phospor bronze deliver a warmer tone.

Comparison of Phospor Bronze & 80/20 Bronz

Now you can see the difference of colour.

Nickel Wounded

This is a electric guitar string, nickel wounded. It doesn't deliver sound and tone as good as any other type of string, nickel wounded string is specialized for electric guitar pick-up usage. So don't ever put nickel wounded string on your acoustic guitar.

Ungauged String

So this is the normal guitar steel string, mostly used on 1st and 2nd string, and even on 3rd string on .009 electric guitar string set. The strings mentioned before this is gauged string, means you have the spring-like wire cover on the string, but this is not gauged. Just to mentioned that if you want to buy spare string as 1st and 2nd string often broke, remember to buy the same type of string as your current string set to deliver stable and balance tone.

Silk & Steel compound String

I never saw this kind of string before, and never think of using it, maybe it's kinda combination of classical guitar string and acoustic guitar string, to deliver classical guitar tone on acoustic guitar. the string is cover with silk and gauge.

A little bit of history knowledge~

What we think of today as an acoustic guitar was developed in the early 20th century for players seeking more volume than traditionally constructed guitars could provide. C.F. Martin & Co. of Nazareth, Pennsylvania was among the first guitar makers to try to meet this new demand. By the 1920’s Martin was making steel string guitars, reinforced more than their predecessors and many of them much larger than standard guitars of the time.

These larger instruments were referred to by Martin as "Dreadnaughts" and Gibson as "Jumbos", in order to differentiate them from older, smaller, parlor style guitars.  Many companies began to produce steel string guitars in many sizes. The new steel string guitar was constructed much like its ancestor, the Spanish classical guitar. They were still made of particular woods selected for tone quality, but were given much stronger cross bracing inside to hold up to the greatly increased tension of the new steel acoustic guitar strings. Steel string acoustics also had different bridges, utilizing pins to hold the ends of the strings in place. This was in place of the small piece of wood employed on classical guitars to tie the much more flexible classical strings to. Similarly, the wooden tuning pegs of the classical guitar were replaced with metal machine heads in order to effectively tune the newer, much less flexible, steel acoustic strings.

The main advantage of the new type of guitar was that it was much louder than traditional classical instruments. For some this was not enough and to get even more volume, and more than likely to avoid the discomfort of finger picking heavy gauge steel strings, people also began to use guitar picks.  This facilitated strumming of chords for solo vocal accompaniment, among other things. Suitable for nearly any style of music, the steel string acoustic guitar, along with its new, metal acoustic guitar strings, paved the way for the popular music of the twentieth century. As the popular music of the day progressed to using bigger and bigger bands in the 1930's, the quest for even more volume led some players to attempt to use microphones and other types of pickups to amplify their steel string guitars. The feedback problems this created led directly to the semi-hollow and solid body electric guitars we know today.

So now you should have some idea about choosing your perfect string huh? After knowing what type of string you're gonna get, the next is the thickness of the string, usually we got this:

• 009 Ultra Light 09~45
• 010 Extra Light 10~47
• 011 Custom Light 11~52
• 012 Light 12~54
• 013 Medium 13~56

The thicker the string the better the tone, as it need less vibration to deliver same volume as thinner string, of course it also give much more pressure to your fingers. Beginner should start with 011 string, then try to advance to 012.

Please beware that cheap guitar that use lousy wood might not hold the strength of thick guitar string, so don't string on 012 or 013 if your guitar is a furniture-grade guitar, not to look down on you, just a remind, so don't blame me if your guitar neck broke after 1 week of happy playing medium string~


Talking about brand, I would recommend Gibson Masterbuilt Premium & DAddario EJ series~

Martin is very good in it's sound!!! But easily get rusted, I would say it is a "performance grade" string, that only necessary when you're going to perform on stage, instead of practice at home.

Elixir? No... the volume is too low, I don't like it for acoustic, and you can get DAddario ESP series for coated strings too, I don't suggest to spend more to get coated anti-rust string, why don't just put more effort to mop your string after you play everytime?

These are the most common brand, you can give any other a try and share with us if you find some good-quality string~ we'll talk about taking care of your string in the future, stay tune~ Thank you for viewing~ bye bye~