{"id":605,"date":"2013-05-10T08:25:56","date_gmt":"2013-05-10T13:25:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/blog\/?p=605"},"modified":"2013-06-07T15:19:15","modified_gmt":"2013-06-07T20:19:15","slug":"classical-guitar-strings-strings-by-mail","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/classical-guitar-strings-strings-by-mail\/","title":{"rendered":"Classical Guitar Strings – Strings By Mail"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\nClassical guitar strings, which are primarily used for the classical and flamenco repertoire, are constructed from materials such as nylon or fluorocarbon, and are then covered with windings of various metals or nylon. The traditional classical guitar strings made from gut and silk materials, such as the Pyramid Gut and Gut\/Nylon<\/a> , are still available and highly sought after by musicians trying to achieve a historically correct \u201cold world\u201d sound from their classical guitars.\n<\/div>\n
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Classical Guitar Strings – Strings By Mail<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Nylon Strings, Fluorocarbon Strings, and Titanium Strings – Their Effect On The Sound<\/h2>\n
\nThe sound produced from classical guitar strings can vary extensively, depending upon the manufacturing techniques and materials used in the process. For warmer sonic color and greater sustain, classical guitar players often use nylon based strings, such as the Augustine Regal Series<\/a>. Fluorocarbon based strings, such as the Savarez 540 HT Classic Series<\/a>, generally provide a brighter sonic color and offer a more powerful and projecting sound with less sustain. Another type of classical guitar strings are the Titanium strings, like the Galli Titanio<\/a> for example, which are a variation of nylon strings with a more powerful high end and less mid range.<\/p>\n

Describing the Sound of Classical Guitar Strings<\/h2>\n

When choosing from the vast assortment of classical guitar strings available, the overall goal of many classical guitar players is to find a very particular sound and a playability that matches their style and preferences. To help narrow down the field, some common descriptions used to describe the sound of classical guitar strings are dark, warm, fat, muddy, bright, cool, focused, thin, and harsh.<\/p>\n

The dark, warm, rich, fat, and muddy sounds are most often associated with softer material strings that can be more expressive with longer sustains and easy vibratos. On the other side, the bright, cool, focused, thin, and harsh sounds are often associated with harder materials strings that can be more powerful sounding and are generally louder, have more punch and projection, and provide a faster right hand response while playing.<\/p>\n

Sustain, Projection, and Vibrato<\/h2>\n

For more melodic pieces such as ballads and simple melodies, more expressive strings with greater sustain, projection, and easier vibrato are ideal classical guitar string choices. For more rhythmic pieces like flamenco, classical guitar strings with more punch, a short duration, and a harder vibrato are a good fit. Some sets are designed specifically for flamenco<\/a> use.<\/p>\n

Harder classical guitar string materials help contribute to a brighter sound, and the strings made from pure metals help to provide a more \u201cpure\u201d fundamental and clear sound. Treatments of classical guitar strings, such as coatings, polishing, or platings, lead to changing the nature of the sound.<\/p>\n

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Classical Guitar String Types<\/h2>\n

Nylon classical guitar strings are known to have good sustain, easy vibrato and a balanced rich sound, however they are not as loud or powerful.The carbon classical guitar strings are louder, last longer, and are very stable when tuning, but they can be inconsistent with their intonation and have a shorter sustain.Like standard nylon strings, titanium classical guitar strings have better intonation with easy vibrato, but they can have temperature sensitive tuning issues.\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

\nClassical guitar players seem more inclined than acoustic or electric players, to mix and match their string sets – often mixing various treble and bass sets from various manufacturers with varying string material compositions and manufacturing processes. It is also very common to become enamored with the sound and feel from various single strings, and piecing together their own custom set of strings until they have reached that nirvana of sonic bliss when they know they have found their perfect sound across all six strings.<\/p>\n

Strings By Mail offers our Custom Customer Concoctions<\/a> (C3), where you can create your own classical guitar string sets out of individual strings from various manufacturers. You can then save your C3 set in our system for easy reordering, and share your creation for other players to try.<\/p>\n

Knowing When To Change Your Guitar Strings<\/h2>\n
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Classical guitar strings do not last forever and they deteriorate from the frequency and duration of use, the environment in general, and the overall breakdown of the materials themselves. Oxidation, wear, material fatigue, and material degradation are common things that cause classical guitar strings to break down over time.\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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Often, like any guitarist, classical guitar players may not even realize that their strings have degraded due to their relative judgement. These players may not notice the gradual changes in their string quality over time, and they can forget how easy it can be to play and tune, and how good and inspirational the guitar can sound.\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Classical guitar strings, which are primarily used for the classical and flamenco repertoire, are constructed from materials such as nylon or fluorocarbon, and are then covered with windings of various metals or nylon. The traditional classical guitar strings made from gut and silk materials, such as the Pyramid Gut and Gut\/Nylon , are still available […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-605","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-classical-guitar-strings"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=605"}],"version-history":[{"count":29,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":657,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/605\/revisions\/657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=605"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=605"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.stringsbymail.com\/articles\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=605"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}