Guitar String Mod

One great thing about the guitar that a lot of players might not be taking advantage of is the wide variety of guitar strings that are available. You can use these types of different strings to further craft your guitar's sound and playability.

While most people use nickel plated steel strings on their instrument, you might want to consider looking into flat wound strings. These are different from the steel round wound strings in that they are wound with a smoother and flatter material that has some pretty big impacts on the sound and feel of your guitar.

Flat wound strings will first of all be much lighter and easier on your fingers. The smooth surface will dig into your skin less and make the strings much more pleasant to feel. This fact alone makes it hard to go back to steel strings after you have experienced the feel of flat wound ones. A side effect that this fact has is that it reduces the noise created by sliding your fingers over the strings that is usually present (sometimes too much so) with steel strings. If this is something that sounds like an improvement, you might want to modify your guitar with some flat wound strings.

In general, flat wound strings also have a more mellow and darker tone, which is why they are popular among jazz musicians. One thing I noticed when I first applied this guitar string mod to my instrument is that harmonics were made a lot more audible. This may just be a function of the specific brand of strings I bought, but it would seem to me that all flat wound strings should produce greater harmonics.

Oh, and one more thing, flat wound strings also last longer because they reduce the amount of dirt and oil that can get into the strings. Round wound strings collect dirt pretty easily, but this is not the case with flat wounds because of the way they are made.

So if you are looking for an easy customization for your guitar, and any of the benefits of flat wound strings sound good to you, try them out and see if you like them better. This is one of the easiest guitar mods you can do that will have a big effect on the sound and feel of your instrument.