As with picks, we tend to stick with the strings that we know, but they, too, are another part of your setup that is ripe for the kind of exploration that will enrich your recording experience. Experimenting with gauges, for example, will help you find the right feel for your instrument—go with lighter sets if you’re playing a longer or multi-scale instrument, for example. Heavier gauges help balance out the lower tunings that can provide a darker, heavier, or more sombre vibe to your recording.
Gauges offer more than just a change in feel, though—tracking with different gauges is a great way to bring in a different tonality to your recording. This is a great boon if you’re doing all the tracking yourself, and you don’t want all of the guitar parts to sound exactly the same. Try recording different takes with differently gauged sets, panning them opposite each other to create an interesting tone you can’t achieve any other way. If you’re strumming on an acoustic, go with a lighter gauge than you would typically play to get shimmering highs and a tight, compressed low end. For electric rhythms, go with a lighter gauge to bring out the highs and mids and, again, tighten up the low end—no matter whether you’re clean, overdriven, or distorted. Heavier gauges will fill in the low end and tighten up your chords for fast syncopated riffage. Again, play with blending different tracks of each round of gauges to create unique tonal concoctions.
Light gauges are perfect for tracking solos because they allow you to let your inspiration carry you from note to note without making your hands work too hard. Don’t worry about sounding too thin—plenty of guitar players have extracted rich, fat tones from thin sets of strings. Eddie Van Halen, Billy Gibbons, Steve Vai, and Yngwie Malmsteen can all show you something about that. Conversely, you can use heavier sets to tame a fast vibrato or control tuning issues caused by a heavy picking or fretting hand.
Bass players have as much room to experiment with gauges as guitar players do for different tones, tunings, scales, and so on. Playing around with different materials can also add another dynamic to your recording. Stainless Steel Strings bring out the mids and highs, which is perfect for taking a solo or accentuating the percussive sounds generated by slapping and popping. Nickel Wound Strings provide growling low mids and big lows for fat, funky rhythms. Check out our Super Bright™ Bass Strings for an overall brighter tonal take on each material.
Flatwound Bass Strings offer a whole other dynamic. If you want that classic rock and R&B thump, then Flatwounds are the way to go, no exceptions. Even if that’s not the specific sound you’re looking for, they generate a fundamental that’s uniquely deep, full, and round. It sounds incredible on recordings where each bass note is given the space to bloom.
With all of these options, guitar players and bass players should remember to adjust your instrument’s intonation whenever changing up your gauge or material so that you don’t run into any tuning issues later on.