The Best String Gauges for Playing Slide Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi! My name is John Armstrong with expertvillage.com. I am a professional guitar instructor and today we will be discussing slide guitar and slide guitar techniques. Another thing I would like to discuss is a string gauge and string height because we are not trying to press down into the fret board or the fingerboard of the guitar. The importance of choosing the proper slide is also determined by how thick of a string we are using and how high that sits up off the neck of the guitar. Typically speaking when playing slide guitar, you want a thicker string at least a gauge 10 or higher and you want higher action, a lot higher action than you would try to typically use one playing regular electric guitar doing sweep-picked arpeggios. The higher the action the better, the thicker the string the better. I would use like I said like a gauge 9 string with a lower action. You are going to have to use an extremely light touch and extremely light slide in order to get a technique and I still think it is probably going to interfere, you are still getting some unwanted fret noises. So like I said try to use the thickest string possible, the highest action possible while still maintaining comfortable playing when you are playing your chorded fretted notes."