Choosing Gauge for Guitar Strings

Series Summary

Learning to play the guitar for the first time can be one of those difficult but rewarding experiences you look back on and appreciate in hindsight. Despite the raw, sore fingertips and the drudgery of daily practice exercises, playing the guitar—or any musical instrument for that matter—allows you to express yourself in ways that words fail to do. This ability develops with a measure of patience, instruction, natural talent, and a commitment to excellence. If you want to get good, you have to play through the pain. And you have to know how to string your own guitar.

Learn how to string a variety of guitars, such as acoustic, electric and nylon string guitars. Also learn how to string guitars with special needs, such as Floyd Rose tremolo guitars and double ball string guitars. You will also learn how to tune guitars in a number of different ways, using harmonics, a tunic fork and an electronic tuner.

Video Transcript

"In this segment, we're going to discuss the strings of the guitar and the specifics of them. The gauge of the strings which is the size and thickness of them. And we'll talk about how to take a string off of the guitar, and we'll also talk about how to put a string onto the guitar, and also the different types of guitars. Putting a string onto, say a nylon string guitar is a lot different than putting one onto a double ball guitar. We'll talk about the different ways to tune using the using the fifth fret, using a hand held tuner, or using a foot pedal tuner. You can also use harmonics, and we'll talk about restringing, a little bit more intricate guitars like the Floyd Rose tremolo, which can be a little bit more complicated due to its locking system and the fact that it's floating which allows the tremolo to go up and to go down."