What Strings Should I Use On My Guitar - Acoustic VS Electric? What Gauge?

Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here in this video, I'm going to be going over a common question I get asked by a lot of my guitar students, which is what type of string or what kind of string should I be using? You know, if I'm playing an acoustic guitar, if I'm playing an electric guitar, what are your recommendations? So I'm going to be going through a few recommendations. My personal choices that I use when I play acoustic as well as when I play electric, and the pros and cons of, you know, different things like string thickness and stuff like that. So let's get into the lesson video.

Hey guys, real quick. I just want to say thank you to some of my students who made donations through the website. James Burke, David Boutwell, and Bill Harden, who's also one of my lifetime members in my guitar course. Thank you guys so much for supporting the channel and the work that I'm doing here. Truly appreciate that. Let's get back into the lesson. So let's start off with the acoustic guitar strings since that's what I have in my hand here. If you're looking for the electric guitar string specifically, typically just just forward ahead a little bit in the video and I'll get to those a little bit later. So my string of choice are the d' Addario strings. I've used lots of strings over the years, including elixirs. I'm not a big fan of the elixir strings. I always keep coming back to the d'. Addarios. But the thing about strings is it's a very personal preference, like a guitar pick. Okay. So I always tell students, try a bunch of different things. I'm going to give you my recommendations here, but don't be afraid to try things that the great thing about guitar strings is they're really not that expensive and you can change them out in a few months anyway. If you don't like the way it sounds or if you don't care, just change them right away. And you probably wasted a few bucks, but at least you find something that you like. So my personal preference for acoustic guitar strings, this is what I play with on my guitar. These are the light gauge phosphor bronze D' Addario 0.012 gauge. Okay, so that is the measurement in inches. 0.012 inches here. So we're talking very, very thin string. And acoustic guitar strings can vary in gauge from 0.010, which would be like an extra light string, to more of like a medium sized string, which would be 01,3. Now there's trade offs to these. So let's first let's talk about the string sizes and then we'll talk about kind of like the string material. Okay, so the first thing, the size. The thinner the string, the easier it is to play chords and press the strings into the guitar. So for example, I have light gauge. Actually these are custom light gauge and these ones are light gauge strings. Now custom lights are.011. I don't have a set of extra light strings, but those would be 0.010. And then the light strings, again, the ones I like to use 0.12. So these strings are going to be easier to play than these strings. The trade off is that might be helpful when you're learning bar chords. If you're acoustic guitar player, it's much harder to play bar chords on an acoustic guitar. So going to a slightly lighter string size might be helpful in getting you to at least build up the strength to get them sounding good. The downside is that the lighter the string, the tinnier the sound. So extra light strings sound very metallic. They sound very bright and tinny. Whereas if you get more to a medium sized string, it's a much darker, warmer sound. So the thicker the string, the better the sound, but the harder to play. And that's why I kind of go in the middle. I like the light gauge strings. Hey guys, real quick. I hope you're enjoying the information in this video. Don't forget to subscribe to the channel if you haven't already, so that you'll see when I release more videos just like this one. Let's get back into the lesson because, you know, medium strings really kill me. I find it really hard to play with medium strings. But the lights seem to be just about right for me. So that's the, the string thickness. So the thinner it is, the easier it is to play. But the more tinnier the sound, the thicker the string, the harder it is to play, but the better and more rich the sound is. Now, something else to note here. You might. I don't know if you can see on the top here. I don't know how in focus this is. This says exp. I think that stands for extended play. It's a coated guitar string. Some people don't like coated strings. I like coated strings. They tend to last a little bit longer. Also, I live by the ocean, so there's a lot of salt in the air here, which can tend to oxidize and corrode strings much faster than when I lived further Away from the ocean. So I always use the exp. I've used these for a while now, so that, that is my preference. And also these are the phosphor bronze strings, which have a warm, bright and balanced tone versus this package here. This is a coated 8020 bronze and it is a deep, bright and projecting tone. So let me just put this package down here. On the back of every d' Addario string, there's going to be.

A little chart and I'll put a picture up here in case I can't zoom in and make these clear. There's a chart on the sound quality of the strings. So these 8020 bronze are on the skin, teal all the way to this end, which is the brightest tone. And then you can get down to silk strings, steel strings, which are the warmest. Phosphor bronze is here. So it's kind of in. Kind of in the middle. I've never played with flat tops or gypsy jazz strings. Maybe I should, maybe I should experiment with those. But I've always done the phosphor bronze. They also on these strings have nickel bronze, which is kind of in the middle. But you can see the phosphor bronze is right in the middle of the scale here. So if you're ever curious, you can always read the description on the front of the package and it tells you so like I said, the light gauge, the phosphor bronze has a warm, bright and balanced tone versus the 80:20 bronze, which has more of a deep, bright and projecting tone. Now, when you're a beginner guitar player, will you be able to hear these distinctions? Maybe, maybe not. But as your ear develops to the guitar, you'll probably be able to pick up more of these distinctions. Oftentimes, students will ask me, why does your guitar sound so much better than mine? Part of it's the wood. The wood creates different sounds for your guitar. But part of it is, you know, I like warmer strings on my guitar. So those are my recommendations for acoustic guitar strings. Like I said, I like the coated phosphor bronze d' Addario acoustic guitar strings. I'll put links to these in the description below so you guys can go check that out if you want to buy some. But what we're going to do next is I'm going to go and talk to you about my preferences for electric guitars. So let's get into that. Hey guys, I hope you're enjoying this lesson. Don't forget to give me a thumbs up. This way, YouTube knows to show this Video to more users just like you. So let's get back into the video. So electric guitar strings in general are thinner than acoustic guitar strings. That's why an electric guitar tends to be easier to play and easier to play chords. But same thing with electric versus, you know, electric and acoustic is there's a variety of string thicknesses. And these were the ones. I'm going to put this one over here for now. These are actually. So again, this one is the extended coated. This one doesn't have the exp. So this is just a regular uncoated string. But this is what I have in my studio here with me. So this purple package is the nines. Okay. So that'd be.009 inches. So 9, 11, 16, 24, 32, 42. Okay. And that would be, I guess, considered the light strings or kind of the extra light strings. And then we have, what we have here are tens, which are very common. 10, 13, 17, 26, 36, 46. So all the strings get a little bit thicker now. Yeah. So this is super light. And these are regular light. Again, pluses and minuses. Just like with an acoustic guitar, the thinner the string, the tinnier or more metallic the sound. And on the back here, these are nickel wound. Again, they're a little bit more in the middle in terms of. In terms of brightness. They have super bright. You can get those or you can get half round strings. So again, you can check the back for the warmth of the sound of the string. But a very important thing to talk about with electric strings, which I'm going to bring up this other set here, is strength required to bend and get strings into pitch. Now, when I started off, I started a lot playing with tens. Okay. Which is great. It has a really great sound for if you're playing power chords. If you're playing, you know, baby bar chords and you're doing a lot of rhythm work, awesome. But whenever I would go to bend strings, it was a pain in the butt to get anything up to pitch and not because I was having a hard time hearing the pitch. For me, strength wise, it was just really, really hard, particularly the G string because it's the thickest. It was really hard for me to bend the G string in pitch. So. So what I did was I said, well, let me experiment with a lighter string. So I really, really liked playing lead guitar with what we call nines on the bottom because it was much easier for me to bend the strings and actually bend them and get the pitch correct. So for me, it was more of like A physical strength thing. So maybe I have weak fingers, I don't know. But for me, it was much easier with nines to. To play bends and such. So again, the trade off was I went to a thinner string, so I lost the thickness on those top strings for your power cords and stuff. So what I did recently is I switched over again. These are the exp coded. You don't have to get EXP coded, but these are super light top, super light top in regular bottoms. So what it is, is it's the bottom three strings. It's the bottom three strings of this set. 9, 11, 16. And it's the top three strings of this set. 26, 36, 46. And what does that do? So it allows me these. We call this like a hybrid, a hybrid string pack. And what this does is it allows me to be able to do my bends much more easily on the bottom three strings. So. But it gives you a much bigger and thicker sound on the top three strings for your rhythm work for your power chords. So I've switched over to these. I think they're. I think they were really great set of strings. You know, if you're just a rhythm guitar player, go with the thicker strings. If you're a lead guitar player, you know, play around with bends, see what works better for you. But I like these because they're a good balance of both worlds. So you don't really have to sacrifice the sound on the lower end by going for a lighter string on the bottom. So I think it's a really, really good balance. And again, these are the, these are the coated nickel, super light top, regular bottom. It's the EXP125S. And again, I have the, the coated. You do not have to get, get the coating, but give those ones a try if you're looking for a good balance in between. And again, I will put links to all of these strings and products in the description below. So I hope you guys enjoyed this video. Like I said, string preference is a personal choice. So try lots of things, but definitely check out those links in the description below to go check out some of these strings. Also, YouTube is going to post up a couple videos over here that you might find interesting. Go check those out and I'll see you guys in another lesson video.