Guitar Strings Guide: Gauges, Materials & When to Change

New strings are the cheapest upgrade in guitar. A fresh set costing less than a takeaway lunch will make a tired instrument sound brighter, hold its tuning better and feel nicer under your fingers than anything else you can spend money on.

This guide is for everyone: beginners who've just been told 'it needs new strings', parents shopping for a school classical, and regulars after a straight answer on gauges, bronzes and coatings. We restring guitars every week at the Footscray shop, so this is exactly the advice we give over the counter.

How often should you change your strings?

The honest answer depends on playing time, not the calendar. Strings die from sweat, skin oils and humidity, and they corrode even sitting in the case untouched.

• Playing daily or gigging: every 4-6 weeks. Working players often change more often than that, sometimes per gig.
• A few sessions a week: every 2-3 months is about right.
• Casual playing, an hour or two a week: every 3-4 months — and twice a year at an absolute minimum, even if the guitar mostly sits on the stand.

The telltale signs it's time: the tone has gone dull and thumpy, the guitar won't hold tune, the strings look grey or brown instead of shiny, or you can feel grit and flat spots when you run a finger along them. If you can't remember when you last changed them, that's also your answer.

Parents: if your child's teacher says the guitar needs new strings, they're right. Old strings make a perfectly good guitar sound far worse than it is, and they make learning harder than it needs to be. Wiping the strings with a dry cloth after playing genuinely extends their life, and a basic string cleaner from our care products shelf helps too.

Gauge in plain English: 9s, 10s, light and medium

Gauge just means thickness, measured in thousandths of an inch, and a set is named after its thinnest string. So '9s' run from .009 to .042, and '10s' from .010 to .046. Thinner strings are easier to press and bend; thicker strings give fuller tone and more volume but ask more of your fingers.

• Electric 9s (super light): the kindest choice for beginners — easy bends, gentle on fingertips while calluses build.
• Electric 10s (regular light): the most popular electric set on the planet. Slightly fatter tone, stays settled under hard strumming. If in doubt, 10s.
• Acoustic light (12s): the standard acoustic set — full tone without fighting the guitar.
• Acoustic custom light (11s): a kinder option for beginners and light-touch players, with a small trade-off in volume.
• Acoustic medium (13s): louder and bolder for heavy strummers — genuinely hard work, and worth checking your guitar is built for the extra tension first.

One caution: jumping more than one step in gauge changes the pull on the neck, so the guitar may need a setup tweak to play its best afterwards. You can browse every gauge we stock in our strings department.

Acoustic strings: 80/20 bronze vs phosphor bronze

Steel-string acoustic sets come in two main flavours, and the difference is real but simple.

80/20 bronze (80 per cent copper, 20 per cent zinc) is the bright, crisp option. It sparkles when new and cuts through nicely if you strum with a pick or play alongside other instruments. The trade-off is that the brand-new zing fades fastest of any string type.

Phosphor bronze adds a little phosphorus to the alloy, which warms the tone and slows corrosion. It's balanced, a touch sweeter in the mids, and holds its sound noticeably longer. This is our default recommendation for most acoustic players, and D'Addario phosphor bronze sets are our biggest seller for exactly that reason.

A simple rule of thumb: if you fingerpick, record or play solo, go phosphor bronze for the warmth and longevity. If you're a strummer who loves that fresh-strings shimmer and doesn't mind changing more often, try 80/20. Both are stocked in every common gauge in our acoustic guitar strings range, so it costs very little to try one of each and pick a side.

Electric strings: nickel vs steel

Nickel-plated steel is the modern standard — a steel core wrapped in nickel-plated wire. Ernie Ball Slinkys and D'Addario XLs, the two best-selling electric sets in the world, are both nickel-plated steel. You get a balance of brightness and warmth that suits every genre, and a smooth, familiar feel. Unless you have a specific reason to stray, this is the one.

Pure nickel is the vintage option: warmer, smoother and slightly lower output. Lovely for blues, rockabilly and classic rock tones, especially through a clean or lightly driven amp.

Stainless steel is the brightest and most corrosion-resistant of the three. If your hands sweat heavily or you chew through strings, stainless lasts longer and keeps its bite. It feels a touch stiffer under the fingers and is marginally harder on frets, which is why we suggest it as a solution to a problem rather than a starting point.

All three live in our electric guitar strings range. For most players the practical decision isn't nickel versus steel at all — it's picking a gauge of nickel-plated set and sticking with it so your guitar always feels the same.

Classical strings — and why never steel on a classical

Classical guitars take nylon strings, and instead of gauges they're sold by tension. Normal tension is the right call for beginners, students and most players: easier on the fingers and easy for the guitar. Hard tension pulls tighter for more volume and projection, with a stiffer feel — worth it once your technique has developed, or if you need to fill a room without amplification.

Now the rule we'd print in capital letters if we could: never put steel strings on a classical guitar. A classical has light bracing, a glued tie-block bridge and usually no truss rod in the neck. Steel strings roughly double the tension the instrument was built for, and the result is a bowed neck, a lifting bridge, or both. We see the damage come through the workshop door, and it's often not repairable on a student guitar.

It cuts the other way too. Nylon strings on a steel-string acoustic won't anchor properly and sound limp, and on an electric they won't drive the magnetic pickups at all. Match the set to the guitar: half-size and three-quarter-size school guitars are almost always classicals, so they take normal-tension nylon from our classical guitar strings range. Not sure what you've got? A photo of the headstock is usually all we need to tell you.

Coated strings, and DIY vs the in-store restring

Coated strings wrap the wire in a micro-thin polymer that blocks sweat and grime. They cost roughly two to three times more than uncoated and last three to four times longer, so the maths works out fine. They're genuinely worth it if your sweat eats strings, if you play only occasionally (uncoated strings die in the case regardless), or if you simply hate restringing. Modern coated sets like D'Addario's XT range and Ernie Ball Paradigm feel very close to uncoated — just fractionally slicker, with a touch less brand-new zing.

Restringing yourself is a 20-30 minute job with a cheap string winder and a pair of cutters, and it's a skill worth learning — every guitarist should know how. Electric and steel-string acoustic changes are straightforward; classical tie-knots, 12-strings and locking tremolos are where most people come unstuck.

Or skip the hassle entirely: our in-store restring service is $55 plus the cost of strings, and it includes a clean — fresh strings fitted, stretched in and tuned, with the guitar cleaned up while we're at it. It's the easy answer for fiddly jobs, school guitars and anything that hasn't been touched in years.

Not sure what your guitar takes? Call us on 03 4151 5751 or bring it into the Footscray showroom at 284-288 Ballarat Rd — we'll have it sorted in minutes, and you can feel a few different sets on the wall while you're here.

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Common mistakes to avoid

• Putting steel strings on a classical guitar Steel roughly doubles the tension a classical was built for, bowing the neck and lifting the bridge. It's the most expensive string mistake there is — classicals take nylon, always.
• Replacing only the string that broke One bright new string against five dull ones sounds odd and won't balance. If one string has died of old age, the rest are right behind it — change the set.
• Jumping two gauges without a setup Going from 9s to 11s changes the pull on the neck and can leave strings buzzing or sitting high. Move one step at a time, or budget for a small setup adjustment.
• Trying to revive dead strings Boiling or scrubbing old strings buys you days, not weeks, and the tone never fully comes back. A fresh set is one of the cheapest things in music — just change them.
• Letting strings rust because the guitar 'isn't played much' Strings corrode in the case whether you play or not, and rusty strings are rough on young fingers. For a guitar that comes out occasionally, coated strings are made for exactly this.

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Keep reading: Acoustic Guitars Buying Guide · Electric Guitars Buying Guide · Guitar Amps Buying Guide