Do you gig with 9 gauge strings?

Rich14

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Sep 10, 2015
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Hi everyone,

I'm new to the forum. And new to PRS guitars. I've wanted one for a long time and now I have an SE 24 standard. Had it for a week. Great instrument. Love it.

I've played acoustic most of my life, just "messed around" with electric. Now I'm getting' serious!

Over the years, I'd always been advised that anything less than 10 ga strings were useless as far as tone and staying in tune were concerned and that no one used 9s for any serious playing, certainly never for professional playing. So I always used 10s or 11s for my (not so diligent) attempts to play Les Paul or Strat type instruments.

So I found it surprising (and a relief to my fingers!) that PRS guitars come strung with 9s. I have to assume that PRS has good reasons to string them that way at the factory and that the reasons have nothing to do with the intent to "appeal to pimply-faced teens who need to bend every note two and a half tones."

However, I've now gone through 4 string changes in the last week because I keep breaking my high E string. It's due to bad (horrible) technique on my part, as I tend to mash down more than push laterally and the string breaks under my middle finger, one fret down from the fretted note (ring finger). It's happened to me with many different guitars so it's not a problem with the instrument.

I'm unlearning that bad habit and I've had the same set on the guitar 3 days now and the E string is surviving! (I'm using D'Addarrio. I've always liked them. I assume that's what came from the factory as the balls were all color coded.) I know that I can restring with whatever gauge I want (wonder how much I'll have to adjust intonation, string height, etc?) but I'm sticking with 9s for now.

I assume PRS is advocating for such light gauge. They wouldn't string them that way if 9s in an way detracted from the guitar's performance. I understand players such as Santana use very light gauge with no problem.

I'd like to know how many of you actually gig with 9s. I would think that the chance of 9s breaking during a performance is too high to risk it. No?

Rich
 
Welcome to the forum!
Most SEs come with 9s, and most cores (Maryland built) come with 10s.

If you go bigger than 9s on the SEs, you may have to also file the nut or get a new one.
As far as gigging, Billy Gibbons from ZZ Top plays 7s and gets excellent tone.
I have 9s on all of my guitars SEs and one core, as I tried 10s more than 30 years ago and did not care for them.
I use Ernie Ball Cobalt Super Slinkys which are 9-42, and that is what works best for me.
 
I just put 9-46 on my Brushstroke24. Sound great and not so different than 10s, but far easier to bend and play. I was trying it in the store where I had them set it up, the other customers came to me and mentioned that the tone was very LP like. They were surprised to know that I had 9s on.
 
Oh boy..tell the virtuosos that use 9 (and lower) gauge strings that they are useless for tone and don't stay in tune live. Let me know what the response is :) Vai, Satch, Petrucci, & Malmsteen all use 9's or lower. Malmsteen actually uses an 8 for his high E. Petrucci goes back and forth between heavy bottom 9s and 10s depending on the year.

When you use heavy strings, you end up rounding off the highs and losing a lot of bite and singing quality in higher notes. While you get a "thick" tone, you lose some of the vocal qualities and also the ability to inject a lot of nuance into lead playing. This tends to work in blues, because that is what you want. However, its detrimental to rock, prog, and metal lead playing.

I use 9s on all of my guitars and the tone is just fine for me. History shows they are ok to gig with too.
 
I used 9's for many, many years until I got the Bernard. That came with 10's stock and they felt great on it's 24.5 scale. I actually moved up to 10's on my Strat after that and like the feel despite the scale difference. So, it's more about feel for me than a tone thing. You can get great tone from any guage string and anything you've heard about lighter gauges is pretty much nonsense.

When I was a pimply faced teen I wanted to be Gilmour so two and a half fret bends where something I did a lot. Keep em fresh and watch your technique and you should be fine.
 
you know what you get from heavy gauge strings that you don't get from light strings?... carpel tunnel. Mike Einziger of Incubus can tell you what heavy strings can do to you. He went crazy with the tone chase and eventually ended up using 13s. I read an article where he says his playing is limited today because of it.
 
I prefer to use 11-50 Balanced Tension D'Addario's. They are not that harder to play than 10s and give me a thicker/fuller tone.

Though, now that I am 40 and getting up there in age, I have been considering dropping down to 10s on the high side.

That being said, Billy Gibbons plays 9s, but SRV played 12s. So IMHO it's about what you feel comfortable with and what doesn't make things to hard to play.
 
I think this is one of those cases for it really "depends". My SE came with 11's, and I love it. Of course, in this case it's the SE Clint Lowery model, downtuned (stock it's drop B, but I tune it to drop C). It's also a 25.5 scale neck. I like the heavier strings for heavier playing. My Core CU24 also has 11's on it, and it feels very natural to me. My S2 is 10's, and it doesn't feel a whole lot different than 11's to me. But dropping down to 9's just feels a bit too loose to me, which I think the OP is finding an issue too. Heavy handed means you're going out of tune too easily. You can adapt though, just takes time. 10's overall though, is a nice inbetween gauge, not too heavy, not too light. If you're breaking strings though, I think 10s or even 11s might work better for you.

My Acoustic is 13's, and that can be tough to do much with bends.
 
Wow, you must be brutal on frets! Definitely keep working on that lighter touch! Funnily enough, when I was a pimply teen, I used 10's and 11's at different times. I definitely had trouble playing on 9's because I had a death grip with my left hand. This was on 25.5" and 25" scale guitars, and I was very hard on frets.

Fast forward about 20 years, and I'm gradually shifting to 9-46 on all my guitars. Totally bogus notion that you can't get good tone, stay in tune, etc. I'd been using 9.5-44 on my PRS guitars for the last couple years. I ran out a month or so ago, so I tried the 9-46. Felt so great I'm going to make it a permanent change. I'm fundamentally a blues player and I bend a lot. The lighter strings are much easier on my hand and I seriously don't remember the last time I broke a string.

On something with a 24 3/4" or 24 1/2" scale I would possibly stick with 10's since the shorter scale makes the strings feel slinkier. I don't have any of those in my stable, though.
 
I've personally always used 10s, they just feel right, I didn't go to them for tone. On my Peavey I have tuned in D-Standard ( with the d-tuna drop C), I do use the Cobalt "power slinky", 10-52, but use an 11 in place of the 10 since it seems to keep the balance a little better when I flip the d-tuna. Of course eventually I'll get to rebuilding that guitar and get the tremol-no installed, then I might be able to use the 10-46 I use on everything else.

In the end, use what you want, you have to play it, ultimately it's the player that makes the music, not the guitar, amp, effects or strings.
 
I mentioned Gibbons uses 7s, but looks like he may be using 8s now, and sometimes 7s.

Do you really use .008 gauge strings? If so, how do you keep them from flapping when detuning? And how do you get such a great tone, since I have always believed the bigger the strings, the better the tone? — Brian Wachter

I, too, once believed in the heavier gauge string as a superior tone source. However, thanks to the graciousness of B.B. King I learned that a lighter gauge string offers superior playing comfort. Detuning requires some adjustment of attack, approach and feel. Try it. You may like it.
http://www.guitarworld.com/dear-guit...rings-and-more
Jimmy Page: well-known user of 8-gauge strings.
Danny Gatton: played 10s with a wound G, also played 9s.
Jeff Beck: “On my early stuff, I was playing the thinnest strings you could get, .008s,” Beck told Fender.com. “And then the Jimi man came along and told me, ‘You can’t play with those rubber bands. Get those off there.’ So my string gauges have been creeping up ever since. Now I’ve got .011, .013, .017, .028, .038, and .049. I’m trying to get heavier on the top end.”
Billy Gibbons: hipped to light-gauge 8s or 9s by B.B. King. King’s take on it is that it takes a lot less stress and strain to play the light stuff. Gibbons’ custom set from Dunlop has a 7-gauge high E!
Brian Setzer: 10s straight out of the box.
Peter Frampton: 8s back in the Comes Alive days.
Carlos Santana: 9s
Allan Holdsworth: 11s
Eddie Van Halen: well-known for using 9-gauge.
James Hetfield: .009-.042
http://www.premierguitar.com/article...g_Myths_Part_1
 
Since I've seen it brought up in this thread, one always needs to pay attention to tunings other than standard, when discussing string gauges. As soon as you start tuning down more than a half step, you probably need to be going up in gauge.

In standard tuning, of my 4 PRS guitars, two now have 9s, one the factory 10s, but the 4th one I just restrung with PRS 9.5s and I believe that is what at least 3 of the 4 will use in the future. PRS guitars play so incredibly well that 9s can be almost too slinky at times. I love them, but play them one night then pick up your strat the next and the strat feels like playing a Martin or something. (Mock horror face here. :D)

I love the 9.5s on PRS guitars. I'm probably going to light top/heavy bottom 9s on my JP12 next time. It really depends on what you want and like, but the guitar factors heavily as well. I tend to try several gauges with each new guitar, then settle on one from them on for that guitar. Find what feels and plays best for you and adjust your tone from there. IMHO
 
I'm a bit heavy handed when playing so I'd push 9s out of tune. 10s are just a bit much so I' settled years ago on 9.5s as perfect on my PRSi with the 25" scale.
PRS sells them, and D'Addario as well as Kust Mangan all make that size.

Jim
 
I have 9's on my SE, 10's on my Core, and 9-46's on my strats and my tele. I pretty much just play my Core CU24 at shows now; unless I break a string!
 
I don't play out a lot, so I would not call it "gigging" but I generally run 10-46s. I have 9-42s on one of my CEs, because it came that way and sounded so amazing that I didn't touch a dam thing. My other CEs are running 10s though. I definitely notice a jump in fullness of tone (and conversely a taming of highs) between .09s and .10s with the CEs (HFS/VB).

When I had a few SE CU24s I always ran them with 10-46 because I liked the way they sounded better, especially with the split coils. I grew to like the feel better too.

I have two strats - the one with noiseless pickups I keep with .09s (as original) because I think those particular pickups sound more traditionally single-coiley with the lighter gauge. I run .10s on the one with the "regular" pups because it fills things out.
 
What a great forum! Thanks everyone for all the advice.

I'll keep practicing with 9s, 9.5s and learn to stop brutalizing them. Gotta unlearn that acoustic death grip.

Rich
 
What a great forum! Thanks everyone for all the advice.

I'll keep practicing with 9s, 9.5s and learn to stop brutalizing them. Gotta unlearn that acoustic death grip.

Rich

It takes A LONG time to unlearn it... I started on an acoustic with 13's... moved to electric well over a year ago completely and still have to think about not mashing the string.
 
I mentioned Gibbons uses 7s, but looks like he may be using 8s now, and sometimes 7s.

I gig almost every weekend, and I use Billy Gibbon's signature strings, which are .007 gauge. It's amazing, I can play for countless hours without any fatigue. Such a light gauge requires some adaptation, however... not for the faint-hearted!

ecc7flG.jpg

:adore:
 
Since I've seen it brought up in this thread, one always needs to pay attention to tunings other than standard, when discussing string gauges. As soon as you start tuning down more than a half step, you probably need to be going up in gauge.


Tuning and scale length! As tunings get lower and scale lengths get shorter, string gauge can (and sometimes needs to) go up.


What a great forum! Thanks everyone for all the advice.

I'll keep practicing with 9s, 9.5s and learn to stop brutalizing them. Gotta unlearn that acoustic death grip.

Rich

I'm sure that's what had me mangling my electrics the first few years. I started off on a cheap acoustic with super high action for the first year or two.
 
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