String gauge

DaevidJ

11s my Jaguar and 10s on everything else 

ICBM

Iamnobody said:

It’s something that I’m going to have a think about before I restring my Gretsch.

I’ve played 10s for years but my LP junior came with 11s.

I’m very happy with playing 11s now but I’m told that because of the the wraparound bridge on that  the 11s have the feel/tension of a 10s.

The Gretsch needs a restring though and as I don’t know what gauge strings it has (bought used but they feel light) I’m tempted to try 11s, which might be more Bigsby friendly.

It's the other way round - wraparounds give a very direct, tight feel because there is no extra length of string behind the bridge to 'take up the slack' when bending. It does mean that you have to bend the string less far to get the same pitch rise, but it will feel stiffer.

Definitely go with 11s on the Gretsch, for the same reason - the long string length to the Bigsby makes them feel lighter, and Bigsbys work better with heavier strings as well. In my opinion a wound 3rd sounds better on this sort of guitar, but I know a lot of people use plain ones.

stickyfiddle

9's on Fenders, 10's on Gibsons and my PRS-scale Cabronita, 12s on acoustic.

crunchman

ICBM said:

Iamnobody said:

It’s something that I’m going to have a think about before I restring my Gretsch.

I’ve played 10s for years but my LP junior came with 11s.

I’m very happy with playing 11s now but I’m told that because of the the wraparound bridge on that  the 11s have the feel/tension of a 10s.

The Gretsch needs a restring though and as I don’t know what gauge strings it has (bought used but they feel light) I’m tempted to try 11s, which might be more Bigsby friendly.

It's the other way round - wraparounds give a very direct, tight feel because there is no extra length of string behind the bridge to 'take up the slack' when bending. It does mean that you have to bend the string less far to get the same pitch rise, but it will feel stiffer.

Definitely go with 11s on the Gretsch, for the same reason - the long string length to the Bigsby makes them feel lighter, and Bigsbys work better with heavier strings as well. In my opinion a wound 3rd sounds better on this sort of guitar, but I know a lot of people use plain ones.

I've gone back and forth on my Gretsch.  Started out with 11s, but they felt stiff, and bends were very hard.  Tried 10s but it just didn't sound as good.  Have experimented with 10-52s.  Got D'Addario 10.5s on there at the moment.  I think Newtone do some sets that are meant to be lower tension so I might try them in 11s.  My Gretsch is a Falcon with a 25.5" scale so it may be a bit different on some of the other models with a shorter scale.

On my solid bodies I use 10-46 on everything, although I bought a set of 9.5s a while back as an experiment, which are on one guitar at the moment.

Calum13

11s on my squier jaguar. I would use 10s but I need heavier strings to stop the buzz cause of the shitty vintage bridge.

Grangousier

Of the guitars I use regularly, the trem guitars (partscaster, Fret King Ventura and Corona, Godin LGX-SA) have 10s and the hardtails (Teles, Epiphone Dot) have 11s. Others have various strings on them, usually 10s. I tend to look for sales on big multipacks. All D'Addario. If I could be bothered to go through the hoohah of refloating the trem I'd try 11s on one of those, just to see what it was like. 

Iamnobody

ICBM said:

Iamnobody said:

It’s something that I’m going to have a think about before I restring my Gretsch.

I’ve played 10s for years but my LP junior came with 11s.

I’m very happy with playing 11s now but I’m told that because of the the wraparound bridge on that  the 11s have the feel/tension of a 10s.

The Gretsch needs a restring though and as I don’t know what gauge strings it has (bought used but they feel light) I’m tempted to try 11s, which might be more Bigsby friendly.

It's the other way round - wraparounds give a very direct, tight feel because there is no extra length of string behind the bridge to 'take up the slack' when bending. It does mean that you have to bend the string less far to get the same pitch rise, but it will feel stiffer.

Definitely go with 11s on the Gretsch, for the same reason - the long string length to the Bigsby makes them feel lighter, and Bigsbys work better with heavier strings as well. In my opinion a wound 3rd sounds better on this sort of guitar, but I know a lot of people use plain ones.

11s it is then. Cheers.

DartmoorHedgehog

Interesting discussion - the "why don't heavier strings break more often because they are at higher tension?" in particular.  Personally I haven't noticed any relationship between string gauge and frequency of breakage, but I don't change gauges on the same guitar and hardly ever break strings, so it's hard to judge.

FWIW, I use 10-46 on my solid-bodies (Gibson scale), 11-54 on a semi-acoustic (Gibson L5 copy), 12-53 on 6-string acoustic and 9-45 on 12-string acoustic.

And the pedant in me says that if you're going to put the decimal point in string gauges it should be .011, not .11 - it's in thousandths of an inch AFAIK.