A general rule for guitarists who want to change from standard to an opening tuning is to tune down for acoustic guitar and up for electric. The two most popular open tunings, especially for slide, are Spanish and Vestapol, named after tunes once popularly played in those tunings. Spanish tuning…
I’ve decided to keep the Breedlove 12 String Guitar I ordered. Now I’ve got to share all the random things suggested by owning a 12-string guitar. One of the first considerations for a new 12-string owner is tuning the guitar. The nearby photo of Leadbelly playing his Stella 12-string reminds…
Broken strings are a nuisance that most players of stringed instruments have faced. After the fact, you often want to determine why the string broke. Was it a fluke? A bad string? Or maybe your playing style is harsh on strings. A good place to start is to make sure…
… whether the strings needed changing or not! What? How is that possible? Am I crazy? Seriously, I just changed the strings on 3 of my guitars. The strings on my Martin acoustic guitar hadn’t been changed in 9 years. The strings on my Epiphone Casino hadn’t been changed in over 8…
I love flatwound strings on electric guitars, particularly hollow body jazz guitars. I’ve currently got flat wound strings on three of my guitars, one of which is a solid body. There are many companies selling flat wound guitar strings. How do you choose? I can’t answer which strings you’ll like…
So many string choices for your electric guitar. As for acoustic guitars, there are differences based on composition, wrap style and treatments. But many of the differences between sets are simply in string gauges. Heavy bottom and light top end or the opposite. Sets for Drop D tuning. You can…
When I was a kid my local music store stocked one brand of guitar string, Black Diamond. I had two choices for string gauge. Although they were probably called “Medium” and “Heavy” they were in fact heavy and heavier. There was no distinction between acoustic and electric guitar strings. Steel…
I was fascinated to discover ukulele strings composed of two stainless steel flatwound strings for the 4th and 3rd strings. These were combined with two plain clear nylon strings for the two high strings. This is another set from Southcoast ukulele. The strings are the G650 Lineear String set. The…
Southcoast Ukulele makes a nylon set of strings for baritone ukuleles with no wound strings (i.e., all plain strings). I have had these on my cheapo baritone for several months. Right after I made the video (below) I tried out a different set of strings from Southcoast for the baritone.…
I describe the Aquila Low G string I put on my new Tenor Ukulele in the following video. You can also get a Red Series C string. Some people believe the results are better when the two low strings are similar which is why some sets of Low G tuning ukulele…
