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I’m about to take delivery of a Takamine DMP 761 CN Acoustic/Electric guitar. I’ve not owned an acoustic for some 50 years. Can anyone advise me on a good set of strings? On my electric guitars I use D’Addario Pure Nickel 11’s. I don’t mind going to a 12 gauge if that would improve the sound on my Takamine. All suggestions very much appreciated. Many thanks.

On our Gibson J200, we use Gibson “Extra Light”: 11-52 phosphor bronze strings. On a Seagull (our back-up for shows we did), we use D’Addsrio “light”: 12-53 phosphor bronze strings.

Both are easy to play and sound good.

We use the guitars for Shadows rhythm work, so our experience is limited to that, David.

It would be interesting to know what Bruce Welch used in the early days and in recent years.

Andy

Many thanks for your reply. I am very grateful to you!

I can’t imagine there’s too much mystique about the strings Bruce used then or uses now. I’ve never heard a rhythm guitarist not sounding right because of the strings! Plenty of other reasons but not that.

You’ve had some good advice from Andy. If you get some strings that feel right under your fingers and enable you to sound pleasing to your own ears, I reckon you’ll have cracked it.

Cheers - Iain

Over the years I've had some high end acoustic guitars including Gibson J-200, Gibson J-160e, Martin OOO-28 and my current Martin OOO-17 and having tried everything from Gibson Phosphor bronze to Eliexir I have chosen Erniie Ball Earthwood Light Acoustic strings which at 52-11 are easy enough to handle and sound beefy enough to do the job. It is of course down to taste, but I discovered that D'Addario strings always appear to be higher tension and harder to play, regardless of type.
There are some that I like more but they are never easy to get hold of, those are Newtone low tension strings made by a small company in Derbyshire. I liked the Elexirs but the tendency for them to easily break put me off as they are not cheap.

Many thanks for your replies. They are very much appreciated.

Here is a guide by Stringsdirect on tension , which spells most of it out. Folk also say round core is about 3% less tension than hex core. Silk and steel strings are also lower tension and softer tone. Some manufacturers are using thinner cores to reduce tension too, might ge easier to break.

I did tune my accoust8c down a whole step for a few weeks and put a capo on fret 2 to bring it back to standard tuning, which was another way of easing tension , give it a try see what you think.

https://www.stringsdirect.co.uk/blog/string-tension-101/

Many years ao when I had a Martin (I wasn't poor then) I started using Martin 80/20 Bronze, medium gauge 13-52. Now have a Yamaha FG-340 but just carried on using them. Never felt a need to change.