Heads up for anyone looking for the thicker, beefier electric tones that come with heavier strings at standard tuning-
I recently moved from an unwound g to wound and suffered no negatives with tone or bleeding fingers- I had been moving this direction for a long time, and in retrospect, it was the long time that made everything easy. I'm a rock/blues guitarist and here's some history if you are interested.
If you want to play faster, fatter, with more precision, heavy strings do the trick, and I previously suggested a very slow increase in gauge.
But that isn't how I got started- I moved into heavy electric gauge, when I needed stage guitars that could handle acoustic and electric parts (Parker Nitefly and a VariAxe)-
I quickly learned that light gauge electrics strings simply cannot pull off acoustic parts, so I restrung both guitars with medium acoustic strings- At that point they worked great as acoustics, but I was totally blown away by the electric sounds- It sounded like I had upgraded every part of the chain- thicker, fatter, cleaner cleans and more crunchy crunch. Tremolo like I never imagined, faster flat picked leads, incredible intonation- everything is better.
The only problem was I couldn't bend anything and my fingers hurt. So I switched over to medium electric strings, and strengthened my hands. I played the heavier strung acoustics/electrics in tandom with my normal strung electrics and in about a year, I could bend with 12s as much as I wanted.
At that point, I moved almost all of my electrics to 11s or 12s depending on what sounds best. It's been over 10 years now and there is no way I would ever go back. I literally cannot play slinky anymore- it feels like I have slow down to 'wait for the string to recenter' and light strings simply can't handle bending that doesn't phase heavier strings (I dropped from a broken string a week to a broken string in 6 months).
But I held out forever on a wound G- Everyone I had talked to said it was hard, and I had memories of how hard it was to bend on those original acoustic strings.
However, Daddario has a 12-52 nickle bright set that was pretty much made to increase the strat sparkle on the Parker and the only downside was the wound G- I bought a couple of sets over a year ago and just waited.
I finally switched over to them over the holidays and it turns out that I had absolutely nothing to fear! After all of these years of finger calisthenics, I couldn't feel any negatives at all and the sound was beautiful (possibly the brightness of the set overcomes the expected loss of harmonics with a wound string?)
Bottom line, if you want to do it, it isn't nearly as hard as it sounds.
The only downside I can imagine is over tension for a weak neck- I have 1 guitar that is still stuck with 9s- A 1962 Les Paul/SG- they were known for weak neck joints.
So if you like this 'modification', string up an extra electric with heavy strings, strum until you can bend and then keep going!
Zstrat/Mickey
I recently moved from an unwound g to wound and suffered no negatives with tone or bleeding fingers- I had been moving this direction for a long time, and in retrospect, it was the long time that made everything easy. I'm a rock/blues guitarist and here's some history if you are interested.
If you want to play faster, fatter, with more precision, heavy strings do the trick, and I previously suggested a very slow increase in gauge.
But that isn't how I got started- I moved into heavy electric gauge, when I needed stage guitars that could handle acoustic and electric parts (Parker Nitefly and a VariAxe)-
I quickly learned that light gauge electrics strings simply cannot pull off acoustic parts, so I restrung both guitars with medium acoustic strings- At that point they worked great as acoustics, but I was totally blown away by the electric sounds- It sounded like I had upgraded every part of the chain- thicker, fatter, cleaner cleans and more crunchy crunch. Tremolo like I never imagined, faster flat picked leads, incredible intonation- everything is better.
The only problem was I couldn't bend anything and my fingers hurt. So I switched over to medium electric strings, and strengthened my hands. I played the heavier strung acoustics/electrics in tandom with my normal strung electrics and in about a year, I could bend with 12s as much as I wanted.
At that point, I moved almost all of my electrics to 11s or 12s depending on what sounds best. It's been over 10 years now and there is no way I would ever go back. I literally cannot play slinky anymore- it feels like I have slow down to 'wait for the string to recenter' and light strings simply can't handle bending that doesn't phase heavier strings (I dropped from a broken string a week to a broken string in 6 months).
But I held out forever on a wound G- Everyone I had talked to said it was hard, and I had memories of how hard it was to bend on those original acoustic strings.
However, Daddario has a 12-52 nickle bright set that was pretty much made to increase the strat sparkle on the Parker and the only downside was the wound G- I bought a couple of sets over a year ago and just waited.
I finally switched over to them over the holidays and it turns out that I had absolutely nothing to fear! After all of these years of finger calisthenics, I couldn't feel any negatives at all and the sound was beautiful (possibly the brightness of the set overcomes the expected loss of harmonics with a wound string?)
Bottom line, if you want to do it, it isn't nearly as hard as it sounds.
The only downside I can imagine is over tension for a weak neck- I have 1 guitar that is still stuck with 9s- A 1962 Les Paul/SG- they were known for weak neck joints.
So if you like this 'modification', string up an extra electric with heavy strings, strum until you can bend and then keep going!
Zstrat/Mickey
