Those $24 Acoustic Strings

As if I weren’t already blowing enough money on arcane strings, I’ve got a new obsession: Thomastik-Infeld Plectrum series acoustic strings (which sell for $24 in the U.S.).

If you hang out here much, you’ve heard me bitch incessantly about acoustic strings. I hate the way most modern strings are all hyped treble […]

Acoustic Strings Search: Update

Holy crap! Now THAT’S a guitar string!

Man, it pays to curate a blog frequented by smart people!

I wrote last week about my experiment with silk-and-steel strings.

It’s the latest chapter in my ongoing search for the right acoustic strings. Most available options simply sound far too harsh and bright to […]

Back to Bronze Acoustic Strings

Bronze isn’t so bad after all!

A quick update to last week’s post about bronze and nickel strings: Over in the forum, Bear suggested trying 80/20 bronze strings. It’s a little embarrassing to admit, but I thought some of the strings I’d stocked up on and tried were 80/20s, but just realized they […]

Acoustic Strings: Bronze vs. Nickel

Like Talos the Giant from Jason & the Argonauts, most modern acoustic strings are made from bronze. Like him, they can be cruel and inflexible.

UPDATE: I’ve updated the audio examples to include 80/20 bronze strings, as detailed in this newer post.

Can I share my steel-string psychodrama?

I’m lucky enough to […]

Nice, Pretty Acoustic Guitar

Nicely mutated and pretty f’ed up, that is.

Ordinarily, these Thomastik-Infeld Classic S strings sound more like nylon strings than steel ones.

But their cores ARE steel — which means you can play through a magnetic pickup and mutilate the tone with amps and effects. I’m playing through effects designed for Apple’s […]

Strange, Strange Strings

No longer ridiculously expensive. Now they’re just very expensive.

I spent last week covering the Musikmesse musical instrument trade show in Frankfurt, Germany, for Premier Guitar. I had a blast, and Chris Kies and I posted details and pics of more than 70 new products. (Here’s the short list of our personal faves.) […]

Silk and Steel Strings Revisited

Silk and steel — bad-ass, or strictly for wusses?.

It’s been a long, long time since I’ve tried silk and steel strings.

I’ve always thought of them as a transitional set for students migrating from nylon to steel strings. At least that’s how my mom used to explain them to me back […]

Amped-Up Acoustic Guitars

What could possibly go wrong?

There are two ways to approach amplifying an acoustic guitar: trying to duplicate the natural sound, only louder, and NOT trying to sound naturalistic at all. This post is about the second approach.

I love playing acoustic through an electric guitar amp (as opposed to a dedicated acoustic […]

Acoustic EBow: Insane, or Merely Crazy?

EBow on a Dobro? Oh, yeah!

If you’ve screwed around much with an EBow—you know, that battery-powered plastic thingie that you slide against your guitar strings to magnetically invoke infinite sustain—you may have also noticed that it works on steel-string acoustic guitar, especially on the unwound first and second strings. It’s hardly an […]

A Very Quiet Guitar

After last week’s loudness experiments, and with the sonic carnage of NAMM just days away, I figured it was a good opportunity to dial down the decibels and share an interesting guitar/string combination I’ve been enjoying for a few months.

Last spring I wrote about several oddball acoustic strings I was trying out. […]