to strat owners , I keep mine in Eb ,is it worth changing to heavier strings ?

  • One thing I noticed in the vid is that a 10' string tuned to E Flat is the equivalent to a 9 tuned in E , is it right ? sounds logical as the tension is reduced.

    Well it's not exactly the same but let's say in general you can compensate the less tension with a thicker gauge.. yes.

    More or less as you can compensate the logner scale/diapason reducing the gauge thickness..

    You just have to test by yourself how much this compensation match with your playing/taste.

    As said before, My standard on Les Paul is 10's in E and 11's if Eb and I'm thinking about switching to 9's on my tele and strat, 'cause they're both long scale and tuned in E, but.. it's more than one year that I'm thinking about and never took a decision.. probably 'cause in the end I like the way they sound Now.. so no really need to change.

  • i use 09/42 standard tuning on my fender strat.and sound awesome

    Guitar: Fender Strat HSS<3 Schecter Custom Solo II

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  • I've been covering a few songs with Steve Lukather on them, so I have to keep a guitar strung with 9's, but they really don't cut it for any kind of fat clean tone with my style.


    10's are the sweet spot for me, with 11's too strong in the lower end.

  • Note Stevie used 13's!!

    I've frequently heard that he used 13s but I've never heard any indication of why he made that choice. Does anyone know?


    Seems relevant to what's being discussed in terms of tone, feel, stability and so on. 13s is a pretty brutal thing to do to a Strat so I would imagine he had a good reason for it, I just don't know what it was.

    Kemper remote -> Powered toaster -> Yamaha DXR-10

  • SRV would have snapped 9's with his huge hands and ferocious attack.


    I once set my Strat up with 13's tuned down a whole step and it was like wrestling. I also don't like the huge low mid snap for most things.

  • I use 10s on short scale Strat necks. 9.5s on standard scale Strats.


    If you play with distortion, thick strings might not make much of a difference. but I definitely hear a difference playing clean and there is definitely a volume difference between 8s or 9s and a 10 pack.


    That Beato video.....guess what.....they never play CLEANLY. Compare an .008 and a .010 using single coils with a totally clean tone. The difference in volume and tone is clear.

    The key to everything is patience.
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  • SRV would have snapped 9's with his huge hands and ferocious attack.


    I once set my Strat up with 13's tuned down a whole step and it was like wrestling. I also don't like the huge low mid snap for most things.

    Yeah I heard it was mainly because he wanted some real fight as he played hard and felt the tone was better....he also used to superglue his finger tips to leg to get more skin on them in the early days....

  • Mass per unit length goes up as the square of the string guage and the mass of vibrating string directly effects the signal amplitude your pickups produce. From a 10 to an 11 guage gives you 21% more string mass and this should boost the output voltage of your signal by a similar amount. So going up a guage is definitely louder at the same settings and this is most significant/obvious when playing clean tones. You can get more gain easily enough with boosters goosing your amp's preamp or turning up the amp itself but the tone is not the same for clean tones. Clean jazz players using traditional archtop setups often use heavy gauges - 12s, 13s and even 14s for shorter scales.

  • Try 11s first. The difference in output won't be as obvious as how much harder the tension will be on the fretboard. Archtops probable need that tension on the top of the body to sound good, and besides most old school jazz players do not bend notes that much/often as SRV, who had large hands. You play 9s, so even 11s will be quite a change! I have 12s in an acoustic and sure I have to fight it.

    Never too old for rock'n'roll

  • after way more years than I'm comfortable to admit, I realized I was automatically going for 'heavy bottom' sets, which in hindsight was quite counter-productive.


    I set up my guitars to have a nice even output/string balance, which means I have to move the bass side of the pickups further away from the strings than the treble side (more mass moving in the magnetic window -> more output).


    heavy bottom sets make that even more extreme, so I went for a 'normally' balanced set (9-42 for example) and that made balancing and achieving a great live/recording tone much easier.