Chapter 5. Finding the Right Match

This section provides guidance on navigating string choices. It emphasizes the limitations of online reviews and stresses the importance of direct experience. It introduces key factors influencing string preferences, categorized as the "Five T's" (Tactility/tension, Tone, Tenor, Technical, Tuning) and "Five A's" (Affordability, Availability, Awareness, Aims, Attitude).

Finding the Right Match

So, as we have seen, the luxury of string choices today is quite mind-boggling. As with guitar choices and purchases, indulgence in experimentation with strings is only limited by our budget.

But how to choose?

The internet – notably the blog world and YouTube – is full of “tips,” comparison tests, and opinions about strings. Without actually listening in person, however, sound tests and opinions via the internet remain highly problematic, unless you can justify a high degree of trust in the commentator.

For me, the Canadian performer and teacher Bradford Werner provides one of the most sensible (although brief) discussions about string choices. On YouTube, the demonstrations by Mark Cohen on the channel “Nylon Plucks” are thoughtful and free of publicity hype. But here are my thoughts based on experience. They may coincide with or differ from your own.

A whole range of variable considerations and factors influence string choice and preference among guitarists. This list of factors below is subject to debate and modification, and obviously, some of them overlap and interact. For simplicity, I code them as the Five T’s and Five A’s.

Five T’s – String-Centred Factors

· Tactility/Tension (Feel)

· Tone (Rich, Clear, etc.)

· Tenor (Volume, Projection)

· Technical (Materials)

· Tuning (Stability/Intonation)

Five A’s – Player-Centred Factors

· Affordability (Cost)

· Availability of Brands, etc. (For Purchase)

· Awareness (Knowledge of String Options)

· Aims

o a) Performance Goals (e.g., Live Performance/Recording, Private Playing)

o b) Level of Playing/Aspirations

· Attitude (Perfectionistic, Pragmatic, Indifferent, etc.)

Deciding on strings can be a leap into uncertainty and endless expenditure. It can be a pleasant adventure or an agonizing struggle. We can be blessed by strings that suit our guitar from the time we first buy the instrument, or we can be constantly cursed by the nagging feeling that we just haven’t found the strings that suit our guitar.

It’s a cliché that each guitar has its own personality and voice. That sounds cheesy, but most experienced players and luthiers would agree. Of course, it’s truer to say that this is not a single voice, but more a tonal range and potential, because the same guitar can produce a span of textures and tonalities depending on the player.

Nevertheless, it is indisputable that each guitar has an overall tonal personality: some guitars sing sweetly, others are quiet, some are delicate, some are mellow, some have crystalline clarity, and some are just absolute cannons packed with power and projection.

Ideally then, the strings that suit our guitar will be those that mediate and express through our fingers the guitar’s tonal capacity and characteristics, and just as important, suit our touch.

I have owned about twenty guitars over the past two decades and I’ve played hundreds of others. In the process, I’ve also encountered a wide variety of string brands and been forced to think about the string-guitar relationship.

My conclusion? Each guitar likes certain strings (or combinations) better than others.