steel string acoustic players are the "hard men"(and women) of the forum

Keira-WitherKay

? for a week i had a 30 year old steel string acoustic ....with the view to purchase .. at my disposal ( i usually play nylon acoustics or tele's and jazz box's) but i gained a new respect for the strength needed to play steel string acoustics ,

since i had the time to run string guage tests , and i did .... i initially thought lighter strings would work .......NOT ... ? it seemed that the guitar i had only came into it's own when it was fitted with 52- 11's and really sounded even better with 56-13 ........which is hectic if you used to using 9's - 42 on your electric ...........

below is a video of me playing the guitar with 11- 52's sounds great but wow even tho it's lighter than the recommended 13- 56 the tension is way high ...and yes it sounds awesome but 'eina" on the hands
=

so yes ....... with the heavy guage strings on .......the guitar rocked ..........i tried lighter guages ( 11 - 48) only to have it sound horrid ............ all in all 4 string changes in a week .........and it seems despite loving the tone with the heavy guage .......i would have to step away from intoducing a steel string into my arsenal as my hands literally ached after a few hours play .......... and at my age (almost 50) and taking into account i play 4 - 6 hours a day everyday sometimes even more , i'm afraid to put my hands under any added strain ...........

so the guitar which had a low action and warm sound has been after a week returned to the owner ....... NO sale and not cos the guitar was flawed but cos my hands suffered.........

pity i loved the tone but not willing to risk the hand damage in the long run .......... and the action was way flat so the setup was NOT the problem , and it seems to get good tone on a steel one needs to apply a lot more strength on both left and right hand ........ than say to get great tone out of a nylon or electric

so hats off to the steel string players and their 56 guage strings........... respect

as a last resort i may try a short scale steel string acoustic which should use lower tension strings........ but only if it can take lighter guages and still sound cool

AlanRatcliffe

They are, but shhh.... don't tell the metalheads that...

guidothepimmp

Jaaa but does it djent ?? ?

Bob-Dubery

Keira WitherKay wrote: so yes ....... with the heavy guage strings on .......the guitar rocked ..........i tried lighter guages ( 11 - 48) only to have it sound horrid ............ all in all 4 string changes in a week .........and it seems despite loving the tone with the heavy guage .......i would have to step away from intoducing a steel string into my arsenal as my hands literally ached after a few hours play .......... and at my age (almost 50) and taking into account i play 4 - 6 hours a day everyday sometimes even more , i'm afraid to put my hands under any added strain ...........

Well I was nearly 50 when I started playing again. I bought a Takamine dreadnought and was playing with... well 11s at least. And I didn't have the advantage of having my playing muscles in some kind of shape already. So it can be done.

The two guys I think of as "hard men" are Sez Adamson and Martin Simpson. Sez plays with 14s. Simpson, when I saw him at two guitars - one with 13s and one with pretty heavy plain strings that he was using for slide. That guitar was set up with a higher action, and he still did some regular finger style stuff on that as well. OK... the slack key tuning would have taken some of the tension out, but still...