Whats everyones take in stringjoy?

Hey man, thanks for asking. Zig is doing pretty good, he just has a runny nose due to his turbinate bones being destroyed by the radiation. I also got a new girl cat, Miss Li, about 2 1/2 and she’s a barrel of cuteness. She’s a calico / tortie.

I’ve been taking classical guitar lessons for the past six weeks and the teacher immediately pointed out that I was using too much pressure. Then all kinda of other stuff I was doing either wrong or badly. He told me I should string up a practice guitar with 10s and learn to play with them. Then, when I want the “mightier” tone, play heavier strings by very carefully applying additional pressure. That would also be good to compare the tones. But man, I really prefer the sound fat strings. (At least through these old Fenders!)

I have not tried 10s yet, but I immediately started playing lighter on the 13s, which conserved strength and increased “focus” of those fingers. I’m not sure how to describe that, but in deliberately relaxing my non-playing fingers and only using minimum pressure, I could play better with less effort.

But I still want fatter strings!

Daniel Deathtide

Hey thanks! Still dialing in the guitar tone there. I’m dying for better recordings, but not until I’m happy with the tone. It’s not even the tone, it’s the tone as it affects the drips! Rolling off too many highs kills the drips!

Anyhow yeah, I really like the tension of fat strings, I love it. I do agree with my teacher that it would be wonderful for me to be able to play 10s.

Daniel Deathtide

I use .010-.038 on all my guitars...this works best for chikin'pikin', which is what I play on gigs, along with pedal steel. While I love surf, there are no surf bands in my area (Tampa Bay) the music scene here knows 1 kind of music...southern rock.

For those of you that say they are using 11s, what is your low E string gauge? I'm currently using Ernie Ball Power Slinky on my Strat, which are .011, .014, .018p, .028, .038, .048.

I sometimes feel like I'd like a little more tension on the low E especially, so might move to Burly Slinky, which is .011, .014, .018p, .030, .042, .052

Guitarist for Northern Tides from Hudson Valley, NY.
Northern Tides on FB

I see quite a few recommendations for DR Pure Blues i.e. a soft round core string, in my case for a run of the mill guitar. I wouldn't trying them out one day but at the moment I'd prefer something cheaper, robot rather than fancy hand made with a price tag to match. cheers!

I just moved from a standard set to a sort of custom set trying different ones from different Slinky sets.

Settled on..

12, 14, 18p, 30, 42, 52

I tried a 16 and 24w on the B and E, but both did not bend like I wanted them to. So I moved back to the 14 and 18p. Might try a 15 and 20p, but for now, this custom set is working great. I love the extra tension on the lows, and the 12 is just better for tremolo picking than the 11 was. Tiny size difference, but the string is just more resilient and less floppy when picking fast.

Going forward I'll have to get a set of Burly Slinky and grab and extra single 12 for the high E.

Guitarist for Northern Tides from Hudson Valley, NY.
Northern Tides on FB

13s

BillAqua wrote:

It's 99.9 percent of the trad surf sound is a big Fender amp and a outboard Reverb tank.

That’s quite a claim and I disagree completely! With a clean tone I find it pretty easy to hear whether the strings are thick or thin. 10s sometimes throw me, but I can even tell when someone has partial heavy and partial light strings. Something about the decay, it’s “gutsier,” and the attack also has a different tone. There is also the factor of “string bend” while fretting (I don’t know what else to call it) that is mightily different with thick strings. When you pluck a thick string, it goes sharp less than thin strings, and I can hear that. And also a dead giveaway is crazy string bending.

Also I read on this site that in the 60s there were no thin strings...

Daniel Deathtide

Heh, thanks for the thoughtful reply! Can we agree to disagree? I work with my ears (tv sound guy) and am often told that I’m imagining things, and then it turns out I wasn’t. (One time it was a bathroom fan several rooms away from the set that no one in the entire crew heard!) I absolutely have listened to a track and said internally “Those strings sound thin!” or “This would be incredible with thicker strings.” Along with many other bizarrely tangential thoughts. But I respect those who play with thin strings, especially if they don’t sound like thin strings haha! They feel like spaghetti to me and I lose all ability to play anything, which of course cruelly displays my lack of skill.

And hey thanks for the comments! I can’t wait to update those songs, the new stuff is super exciting to me. There’s a lot of dark and dramatic crap. A couple inspired by Ziggy, the cool cat that died last June.

BillAqua wrote:

DeathTide wrote:

BillAqua wrote:

It's 99.9 percent of the trad surf sound is a big Fender amp and a outboard Reverb tank.

That’s quite a claim and I disagree completely! With a clean tone I find it pretty easy to hear whether the strings are thick or thin. 10s sometimes throw me, but I can even tell when someone has partial heavy and partial light strings. Something about the decay, it’s “gutsier,” and the attack also has a different tone. There is also the factor of “string bend” while fretting (I don’t know what else to call it) that is mightily different with thick strings. When you pluck a thick string, it goes sharp less than thin strings, and I can hear that. And also a dead giveaway is crazy string bending.

Also I read on this site that in the 60s there were no thin strings...

Well first off I said I can make my Strat with 9s sound like my Jaguar with Flatwound 12s. For surf music. The only thing I used in the Aquanauts was a Jaguar with 12s. I know that sound and I can totally nail it with the Strat with 10s. Changing the tone knobs on the guitar and bass/treble setting on the Bandmaster would do it. I hate to belittle all the tone searching we do as surf guitarists but the reverb tank makes up 99.9 percent of that. I could probably mic my Princeton reissue in a studio and make it sound just like my vintage Bandmaster as long as the outboard reverb tank was a part of the tone chain along with a single coil pickup Fender guitar.

I think about a man who used to post here. Kyle of the Verbtones(is he still here?). I was shocked to find out he was using 9s on a Jaguar when I was using 12s and he had just as traditional sound as I did.

Unfortunately I have to disagree with your comment about hearing the difference between thin and thick strings. I don't think I've ever listened to a record and went, "wow! thick strings on that guitar!" Maybe with crazy string bending as you noted, but many many guitarists will tune down heavier strings and bend them like crazy so again, hearing that on a recording I couldn't make a string gauge judgement.

It reminds me of the argument I see at the gearpage that rosewood fretboard necks have a different tone from maple.

Lastly, thin strings existed in the 60s. James Burton created a thin set by swapping all this strings down one step and then affixing a banjo string on for the high e. This would have been early 60s.

Mike Bloomfield did something similar as to this was a common practice in the Chicago blues scene. Especially in the "West Side" sound of the mid 60s. Also Nokie Edwards was known to use lighter strings in the mid 60s as well.

By late 60s it's documented Hendrix had 10s.

Deathtide, I hadn't heard of your band till now. I listened to some clips on Facebook. Sounds great man! I totally dig a surf band with 1 guitar player.

Daniel Deathtide