As a burgeoning — bludgeoning? — Bending Blues Guitarist, I am shocked, SHOCKED!, by the bad advice and the rotten technique I witness on the internets, and on YouTube, demonstrating the wrong way to properly stretch a new set of guitar strings.
Continue reading → The In Situ Strings Stretch Technique and How to NOT Stretch Your Guitar Strings
If you play the guitar, you know the strings cut in your fingers as you press them against the frets to sound different notes up and down the fretboard. Building up your fingertips is part of the sore, but necessary, daily leavening process of learning how to play the guitar. The idea, however, is not to build callouses on your fingertips. The goal is to build up the inside of your fingertips while leaving the outer skin smooth. If your fingertips look like mine below after a gruesome practice session — find a nail file and take off that thick, deadening, skin!
If you’ve been following this Boles Blues blog for any length of time, you’ve seen me do many guitar strings reviews with varying gauges and technologies. In my article — Why Can’t You Pick a Strings Gauge? — I endeavored to explain the madness of setting up my guitars with different strings sets.
You’d think with a name like “Blue Steel” — we here at “Boles Blues” would be in love with the “cryogenic activated” Dean Markley Blue Steel Strings MED 11-52. We are not in love! In fact, we don’t think much of these strings. Nay, we cannot even like them.
Continue reading → Dean Markley Blue Steel Strings MED 11-52 Review
After throwing on a set of Gretsch 11-49 strings on my Gretsch G5120, I decided to get my hands on some D’Addario EXL 115 strings for “Blues/Jazz Rock” and at .011, .014, .018, .028, .038 and .049 they’re quite a hefty string gauge and harder to bend than the Super Slinky set o’ nines I’ve been using from Ernie Ball. I bought an EXL115 tenner pack because you get such a greater value buying in bulk and the price drops to around $3.00USD a set.
My $10.00USD a set Gretsch Electromatic guitar strings arrived yesterday. I immediately installed the slighted rusted .11-.49 “Rhythm – N – Blues” gauges on my Gretsch G5120 — even though the factory installed strings were D’Addario EXL115. I wonder why Gretsch guitars don’t arrive installed with Gretsch stings? Is it because the Electromatic strings cost twice as much as D’Addario?
Continue reading → The Gretsch Electromatic Guitar Strings Review
The Gretsch G5120 Electromatic is better known as — “That Orange Guitar” — and it is certainly a big bite of juicy and refreshing sweetness in every way. Orange is not my favorite color, but I love this Gretsch orange and I love the silver pickguard that is standard on the newer 5120’s! The G5120 is massive hollowbody electric guitar — but it is still lightweight in your hands — and you can easily play it plugged in for that electric sound or you can go acoustic and unplugged.
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