How To String A Guitar – 3 Simple Steps To Choosing A Guitar String

If you want to know how to string a guitar, the first step is of course to choose a good guitar string.  There are so many kinds of guitar strings these days that it can be hard for a beginner to choose.  Let me break it into 3 simple steps:

1. Identify The Type Of Guitar

The first step to stringing your guitar is to get the right type of guitar string for your guitar.  Do not string your nylon string classical guitar with steel strings!  Steel (and metal) strings have a much higher tension compared to nylon strings and putting metal strings on them will definitely damage the guitar neck.  You might end up with a warped neck and regretting such a silly move.  Purchase the right kind of guitar string for your guitar.  This is usually marked clearly on the package.

2. Gauge of string

Choose a suitable gauge of string for your guitar.  For beginners, I recommend a lower gauge of string.  This might be marked on the package as lower tension, or light tension.  This is because lower tension strings are easier to play and less taxing on your fingers.

For acoustic or classical guitars, you can choose change freely between the gauge of string easily and this should not affect the sound.  For those of you with an electric guitar with a floating or floyd rose bridge, take note that your guitar would have been specifically set-up for a particular tension string.  Changing the string without the proper change in setup would affect your intonation significantly and is not recommended.

3. Material of string

Please feel free to experiment with different materials of strings.  There are so many varieties now, including nickel, steel, hybrids and even the more exotic coated elixir strings, which are coated with a special material to make them last longer.  Elixir strings are more expensive when compared to the other types of strings, but in my personal opinion they last longer and feel wonderful when you slide your fingers over them.  Unfortunately they only produce strings for acoustic metal-string guitars and not for classical guitars.  For classical guitars I recommend the Augustine Blue Label Classical Guitar Strings which I have been using for a long time and they are simply great!

Hope that this post has helped you learn how to string a guitar better.

Cheers,
Jon J Tan (HowToStringAGuitar.Net)