W.L.Weller wrote: "He strummed it a few times and handed it back to me. He looked at me rather quizzically and said, ‘Why you working so hard?’ I said, ‘What do you mean?’ He said, ‘Those strings. You got real heavy, heavy strings.’ I said, ‘Well, isn’t that how to get the heavy, heavy sound?’ He said, ‘No! Don’t be working so hard!’ >>

Words to live by. Thanks BB!

Paraphrasing/misquoting my bandmate but 100% agree "I kinda wanna fight the guitar a bit and feel like it's fighting back"

11s are the lightest I'll go but I'm ham-handed, zero technique. I prefer 12s but my trusted tech begged me to go with something smaller scale since i usually tune to standard and most of my guitars have repaired headstocks from drunk/clumsy. I play stringed instruments like I play drums: badly and like they're the hated enemy I've finally had the opportunity to revenge-beat on after a 20-year grudge or something. When I was playing guitar, I'd break everything smaller almost immediately. Torlex orange picks, tried lighter and couldn't feel myself playing so I'd shred the back sides of my right fingers. Fuck I suck so bad but also kinda miss playing guitar in a shitty punk band. Maybe I'd be better now that I don't drink but I doubt it.

It is reductive to distill significant string gauge differences down to a slight tonal change. None of that exists in a vacuum.

If tone is in the hands, and it is for anyone worth a shit, then the heavier or lighter strings’ effect on a player’s given style would make a much bigger difference to their guitar sound than what amounted to slight eq differences, especially on that boomer’s hilarious guitar tone.

Personally I play 11’s on most guitars because it opened up the whole neck for me, and I’ve been through 13s, 12s, 10s, 9s, etc. i would only go lighter for a stereotypical lead guitar sound.

Yeah I wrangle with my shit. An ugly sight I’m sure, but I need to have strings that fight back.

Just went through a week with 9s and now on 8s. You really need to play less hard with 8s. It opens up some other interesting things with bends. I thought I'd hate it, but I kinda love it. Gonna go up to 9.5s in about 2 weeks.

Trying out .46 mm picks with 8s, too. I usually play .50 mm.

Co-sign on the "I want it to fight back" and "play the strings like drums" feelings. 11s all around for me, Dunlop Nylon 1mm picks. I bend like crazy too. I don't like the bends to feel "easy". I like playing way more with that physicality to it.

I've picked up a friends guitar with 9s before and I hated it. Everything was making noise all the time in a bad way....my heavy-ass hands would be fretting stuff I didn't want to. But the friend with 9s is one of the best guitar players I know, just fantastic. I really think you just gotta go with what feels right to you.

As for the strings themselves, for electric I'm all-in on GHS Burnished Nickels. Absolutely love them. They have a slightly-polished smooth feel, they sound just broken-in enough when they're new (not too clangy/tinny), and they don't seem to dull as much over time (aka more consistent despite age/corrosion/etc). I wish they made them for bass, I hate brand-new bass strings.

Kyle Motor wrote: Fri Jun 20, 2025 10:51 am I hate brand-new bass strings.

I agree with this as a life-long bass player. But, for guitar, I feel like I'm at the opposite opinion, especially now that I'm playing with another guitar player and trying to compete for space in the mix. Anything to help cut through, without having to tweak EQ or add more pedals.

cakes wrote: Tue Jun 10, 2025 10:12 am I've always used 11s... for no reason other than about 20 years or so ago, I just picked a gauge that seemed good enough and never experimented. However, I recently went down a rabbit hole with string gauges and came across this video (if you don't want to watch the whole thing, go to 14:35, where the back-to-back comparisons are):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wGXj_NQONYM

That actually had more of a difference than I would have thought, and more than another video I watched years ago. Definite gain in treble as you gauge down, low mids richer with thicker. But the difference could easily be made with tone controls on amp or gain pedal. I definitely side with the folks saying that the player's physical interaction with the instrument is most important. If I played 8's I'd be pulling shit out of tune and breaking strings.

losthighway wrote: Fri Jun 20, 2025 11:50 am That actually had more of a difference than I would have thought, and more than another video I watched years ago. Definite gain in treble as you gauge down, low mids richer with thicker. But the difference could easily be made with tone controls on amp or gain pedal. I definitely side with the folks saying that the player's physical interaction with the instrument is most important. If I played 8's I'd be pulling shit out of tune and breaking strings.

The biggest thing I noticed for myself and my interest is that my pedals and my amp feel like they have a little more headroom and my compressor feels like it's doing its job without sounding like it's dropping the volume. It's a very small change, but noticeable once I dropped down to 10s, less so as I've gone down. I don't think that would be the case as much with single coils because they have a lower output, but with humbuckers it just feels so squashed, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. The volume knob even feels a little more usable. I kinda like the extra string bendi-ness, I like it when things go slightly out of tune. I use a very light touch with a vibrato sometimes for this effect. I also want to learn to play a little lighter, because it's easier to do the things that are in my head. There's what I think I want and then there's what I'm actually doing, and I'm using the latter as a guide post.

There's so much dimension to all of this, that you just go with what feels right and make adjustments elsewhere. But, if you want to utilize string gauge as a way to manage certain things about your tone, it could very well lead to not needing certain pedals to make up the difference or open up other pedals that seemed unusable before, something that I have been experiencing. I only use one boost pedal at the end of my drive chain now (instead of a second one that I had front loaded), and I pushed the gain on the amp a little more to give me more useable headroom with my volume knob and keep it generally parked around 80%. I find that I'm liking my bridge pickup more, and even the middle position sounds better to me.

But yeah, I love to slam on the guitar and 11s felt good for that. But that's also when I start playing sloppy.

I started with 9s as a kid, but moved up to 11s by college-age (early mid 90s). Then I put 11s on everything for years. I don't remember what happened, but I started trying 10s on certain guitars. My guess is that I played a guitar with 10s at a shop or a friend's house and enjoyed how it played.

Since then, I've tried 10s on every guitar I own, and then decide between 10s or 11s. For me, it's an immediate reaction. I'm usually a pretty technical and empirical person, but with strings I just react by feel almost immediately. I'm sure the fact that I use certain guitars for certain things plays a big part of it.

And I've just used D'Addario because they're the best performing string for me in the low cost category. I will say that my new Revstar came with Elixir strings and I've been pleasantly surprised.

Ahh strings... we never seem to stop talking about them, and it's usually so mundane