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i feel like a guitar dummy asking this question. i've always known that heavy/thick guitar strings are associated with heavy music, but are there exceptions? obviously most thrash and doom metal guitarists use heavy strings, and nirvana had heavy strings so i'm assuming the melvins have used heavy strings as well. but i recently read that jesu/godflesh stuff has been done mostly with strings on the lighter end. and from the sound of it, not all hardcore and crust stuff involves heavy strings either.

the verdict?

Probably heavy (.52) and then .009 or .008 up top. I can't imagine playing an .008 but I'm sure it would feel nice for those crazy bends.

m.koren wrote:Probably heavy (.52) and then .009 or .008 up top. I can't imagine playing an .008 but I'm sure it would feel nice for those crazy bends.

I've been playing .011 for a long time now, but for some reason I decided to put a .010 set on my new guitar.



The bends ripped the High(pitch wise) E string. And i'm not much of a bender.

Anyhow, There's a metal head in my work place and he uses the (.52) on the low E and 010 on the high E. He likes it. I'm sure you can get a thick sound with thinner strings.

Do any of these guys tune down?

llllllllllllllllllllllll wrote:Do any of these guys tune down?

yes.

i would venture that most doom and crust stuff is tuned down.

a lot of sludge/doom is tuned way, way down.

neurosis from "through silver in blood" on is down to A, i believe.

isis is usually down to B, i think, and on one song (celestial [the tower]) they go down to F#, which is so slack that the pitch dives drastically.

khanate is down to A and sunn is down to Ab, that i can say definitively cause stephen o'malley told me in person.

i heard eyehategod tunes down to C.

carcass tunes down to B, i think.

gorguts sometimes tunes down to G.

meshuggah play 8 string guitars in unison with the bass.

The Sabbath stuff was done with light strings, mainly because of his plastic finger tips.
ZZ Top reportedly used 8s, not that heavy but great guitar sounds.
Same with Jimmy Page and Jeff Beck, not heavy at all but you can get thick guitar sounds without having really heavy gauge strings.
I found they just seem to result in more bass but you loose quite abit of attack.

my band tunes to b and sometimes with drop tune the low b to an a. (grindcore/rock)
we use thinner gauge strings as we are playing pretty fast and you tend to lose the attack of the pick with a heavier gauge.

if i was playing something like the melvins or eyehategod i would probably use a thicker string so the actual feel of the guitar was a little more balanced as thinner strings tuned that low get a little floppy and take a bit of getting used to.

using thin strings tuned low, i find the pick attack tends to make the string go out of tune for a while. it then corrects itself

when I listen to a Melvins song like Boris for example, I don't hear heavy strings at all. they sound way too light to be tuned that low.

I find that with 11's, you can tune down to your C or A or whatever and it's not too mushy.

I have a Gibson Explorer with 13's on it that's tuned A-to-A, and it's pretty right on. it's a lot more slack than my baritone guitar is, and it doesn't have as much power to the sound, but it's good.

lighter strings are harder to play in tune and also give you worse sustain. heavier strings are harder to bend and require stronger fingers in general.

ever try to play Zakk Wylde's custom gauge strings? can be pretty brutal if you're tuned to E.

When I was playing in my old band, we used GHS Low Boomers. I want to say they were 13 gauge or something. I believe they are just called Guitar Boomers now, I don't know. We tuned to D, and dropped the low D down to C. Honestly, I fucking hated those strings, even for the low tunings. If you weren't exclusively playing power chords, the strings sucked. Give me Ernie Ball Power Slinkys (11 gauge) any day for any tuning on any guitar. They have yet to disappoint.