Do Most Guitarists Play 9s?

[Embenny]

I use 10s on everything, but could see myself being happy with 9s on things other than shortscales.

It's more of a feel thing than a tone thing, IMO. I really doubt anybody has listened to ZZ Top and said, "damn, those 7 gauge strings sure sound dinky."

[DeathJag]

I embarrass myself completely when I try to play thin strings. It's as if I'd never held a guitar before. I love the way 13s sound on the jag, and I rejoice at how firm those strings feel.

And sue me, I think they sound dramatically better, much fuller and stronger than wimpy strings. More like a piano than a mandolin!

[DeathJag]

I really doubt anybody has listened to ZZ Top and said, "damn, those 7 gauge strings sure sound dinky."

I have thought that exact thought. I've had that thought at almost every guitar other than a surf guitar. Distortion just makes everything sound wimpy!

[marqueemoon]

11s on everything for me. My usual issue with lighter strings is I fret like a gorilla and tend to pull notes sharp.

Playing with a lighter touch is something I’m trying to work on though. I tried a guitar in a shop with lighter strings yesterday and it felt more manageable.

Seems like 10s are more common these days?

[ThePearDream]

I think they do. A lot of places that sell just a few types of strings, like record stores for example, rarely even have a spot for anything over 10/46. I've been in plenty of actual guitar stores that didn't have any electric strings heavier than 11/49 in the store.

I like a light top/heavy bottom type set myself. 10/52 for S or T type guitars, 10.5/52 on Jazzys and 11/54 on shortscales. I just like beefier wound strings I guess. Also, I think that for any neck with vintage style truss rods, there is a minimum amount of string tension you need to get the neck into an appropriate relief for optimal playability.

I'm curious what the Venn diagrams of "choice of string thickness "and "pick thickness/no pick" would look like. How much does one affect the other? For reference, I like thick picks, in the 1.2-2 mm range. I'm a thick pick and thick wound string person, I like that snap and twang I get from that combo. Hand me a thin pick and a guitar with skinny strings (even worse, jumbo frets) and I wouldn't even know what to do with it.

[Jaguar018]

It's more of a feel thing than a tone thing, IMO. I really doubt anybody has listened to ZZ Top and said, "damn, those 7 gauge strings sure sound dinky."

I confess that I am a little tired of this chestnut. Billy Gibbons and his 7 gauge E string. When was the last time anyone, especially on OSG, has seriously listened to or tried to emulate ZZ Top? [Full disclosure: I like to play a hacky version of the "Just Got Paid" lick now and again ] Also, that guy hasn't met a guitar he doesn't like. When did he start playing with such thin strings? He's able to get primo guitars and amps and he generally plays with overdrive and distortion, so his clean tone isn't quite as essential. I mean, it's cool that he does his thing with his light strings, but then we can bring up SRV and his super heavy strings too.

Early on when I was playing I read somewhere that 8s were great, and I thought the thinner the better. I had a mediocre Epiphone super-strat thing and a Peavy Bandit amp. If you play 'clean' you are going to notice a difference with the tone. I switched to 10s and IT WAS AMAZING. My guitar sounded so much more full and interesting, and I didn't notice any particular change in feel.

I think it really comes down to, as others have noted, personal preferences based on your playing style, sonic tastes and experiences. I have certainly anecdotally read about TGP players getting older and preferring lighter guitars and string gauges. Starting off you might play with the 9s strung at the guitar store. Maybe they work, maybe they don't, and then you break a string and start figuring out what to do next.

I play with 11s on my 'main' guitars and 10s on a few others. My weedley-weedley wooo solos are infrequent as are my bottom lip-biting blooze string bends yet I can totally understand how and why many players will find the lighter strings to be ideal.

[stevejamsecono]

It's more of a feel thing than a tone thing, IMO. I really doubt anybody has listened to ZZ Top and said, "damn, those 7 gauge strings sure sound dinky."

I confess that I am a little tired of this chestnut. Billy Gibbons and his 7 gauge E string. When was the last time anyone, especially on OSG, has seriously listened to or tried to emulate ZZ Top? [Full disclosure: I like to play a hacky version of the "Just Got Paid" lick now and again ] Also, that guy hasn't met a guitar he doesn't like. When did he start playing with such thin strings? He's able to get primo guitars and amps and he generally plays with overdrive and distortion, so his clean tone isn't quite as essential. I mean, it's cool that he does his thing with his light strings, but then we can bring up SRV and his super heavy strings too.

Early on when I was playing I read somewhere that 8s were great, and I thought the thinner the better. I had a mediocre Epiphone super-strat thing and a Peavy Bandit amp. If you play 'clean' you are going to notice a difference with the tone. I switched to 10s and IT WAS AMAZING. My guitar sounded so much more full and interesting, and I didn't notice any particular change in feel.

I think it really comes down to, as others have noted, personal preferences based on your playing style, sonic tastes and experiences. I have certainly anecdotally read about TGP players getting older and preferring lighter guitars and string gauges. Starting off you might play with the 9s strung at the guitar store. Maybe they work, maybe they don't, and then you break a string and start figuring out what to do next.

I play with 11s on my 'main' guitars and 10s on a few others. My weedley-weedley wooo solos are infrequent as are my bottom lip-biting blooze string bends yet I can totally understand how and why many players will find the lighter strings to be ideal.

This is the money post here. Clean I agree, it's more tonally audible. Distorted? Less so, more of a feel thing.

Also for the record -- I saw ZZTop a few weekends ago and Billy had some of the worst live guitar tone I've ever heard. Just compressed to hell and completely undynamic. Granted he's old and his ears are shot now so probably not the best example of him, but woof, did not like it one bit.

Only person worse was Willie Nelson who came on right after them and had the sound guy cranking Trigger to like... Van Halen volume despite it being a DI'd nylon string...

[JSett]

The Billy Gibbons thing is funny because he famously uses multiple rack graphic EQ's and processing so that every guitar he uses sounds almost exactly the same as his favourite guitar. Strings are basically irrelevant.

Rig info at 8:40

[Embenny]

Yeah, I'm not exactly a Billy Gibbons fan, but my point is just that you'll never guess a guitarist's string gauge by ear in the context of the actual music they play.

It's much more about the way you interact with the guitar - the resistance against your fingers or lack thereof. Yes, it sounds different when A/B'd in isolation, but like virtually everything else with guitar, it's just thrown in with a thousand other variables by the time anyone actually hears a note.

Strings, pickups, pickup position, hardware, hardware material, wood, potentiometers, the position of those pots, capacitors, resistors, length of cable (or wireless connection), pedals, preamps, power amps, speaker cabinets, speakers, +/- mics, mic preamps, and everything else that goes on at the studio or FOH (which is a lot). You only ever hear the aggregate of all those things.

The way the actual strings sound and feel only matters to the player - and changes the way they interact with it. A thick, high gauge makes the guitar feel solid and strong and inspires one way of approaching it. A low, slinky gauge makes the guitar feel delicate and malleable, and inspires another way of approaching it.

And it's that - the relationship the guitarist has with the guitar - which becomes most audible. How much vibrato they use, how they attack the strings, how often they bend or use vibrato, etc will all change on 8's vs 13's.

Meanwhile, even an educated audience of guitar players would fail to identify (by ear) the gauge of strings used on any given recording or live performance. It's just not the kind of thing that can be picked out among the variables. 10 gauge chrome flats won't sound thinner or brighter than than 11 gauge stainless steel roundwounds, etc, even on an identical guitar played by the same player through the same rig.

I'd welcome anyone to try picking out string gauges based on a recording. It's just not a thing you'd be able to do.

[øøøøøøø]

It's all what you get used to, what you like, and how the other traits of the instrument interact with the string gauge.

Using the high "e" gauge as a shorthand for string set gauge can be pretty misleading, though. A Thomastik-Infeld BeBop .012 set has a .036 for an A string, while a D'Addario EXL148 .012 set has a .046.

That is an absolutely massive difference! But you could say "I use .012s" if using either. Of course even when talking about the gauge of a single string we must place this in context of the scale length for it to truly indicate anything meaningful about string tension/feel.

I've always tended to favor heavier strings as I like the resistance. But not always.

The string gauges I use range from .010 to .014, depending on the instrument.

Acoustics get .014 or sometimes .013. Electric archtop gets .013 (but a set with skinnier bass strings than this might seem to imply).

Gibsons and Epiphones usually get .011s or sometimes .012s. Jazzmaster gets .012s, again with skinnier basses than this might imply at first.

Strats, Tele Thinlines and Squier Super-Sonic get .011s.

Telecaster, JEM777 and electric sitar get .010s

The Tele and JEM should really have .009s if I want to maximize what I like about the sound of those instruments, but such little tension just feels weird to me at this point. Maybe one day I'll adjust to it and go skinnier.

[DeathJag]

When it's clean, I can easily hear light strings. They have a much different twang.

All those "and you thought you can't get heavy tones from light strings" video are wrong because they are not comparing the strings, they are comparing the distorted strings. I have never heard anyone get a heavy tone with light strings, clean. (I JDGAFF about distorted tones.)

[JSett]

That's a very valid point Dan. You can get fat strings, in normal tuning, to sound quite heavy by how you play and what you're playing. Lighter gauge ones definitely can't do the job as well...again, I think that's due to less of the fundamental harmonics being present. I'm mostly talking about the lower wound strings FWIW.

[øøøøøøø]

The other side of that coin is, I can't get a heavy string like a .012 to give the banjo-like snap of a .009.

It would just require too much energy put into the string, and I'm not that strong.

[DeathJag]

I hadn't thought about that, but I love that banjo spank! In general while I detest the music, a lot of Country has marvelous guitar tones. Shit! I just contradicted myself!

Do lap steel players use thin strings?! Those tones sound super heavy to me.

[JSett]

I hadn't thought about that, but I love that banjo spank! In general while I detest the music, a lot of Country has marvelous guitar tones. Shit! I just contradicted myself!

Do lap steel players use thin strings?! Those tones sound super heavy to me.

Having just bought a lapsteel, and done more than a lot of research into the right strings, the answer is yes. Very short scale means 13's or higher on the top but lighter than you'd think on the bottom (for the standard open tunings at least). I think the classic C6 tuning set I'm on is 13-36 maybe? A lot of people go dobro tuning (Open G) and will have stuff like 13-60 on them though.

Pedal steel I have no idea.

I can see why you'd want that banjo spank, it's wonderful, but it definitely sounds thinner...as you'd expect.