Week 87: Spanish Guitars 1: Strings

This is going to be an informational series about Spanish guitars. This particular post is going to be specifically about Spanish guitar strings. If you don’t have a Spanish guitar, you can easily find them at thrift shops for $50 or less (I’ve seen decent ones for as low as $10) or you can buy one at your local music store for not much more than that. Many people already own Spanish guitars for home use or for when they go camping. I use mine to record and perform live and I love the sound of it and have not played an electric guitar in almost 10 years nor have any interest in playing one ever again (though that, like everything, may change). I love the sound of the two Spanish guitars I own, it is warm, round, full and percussive, running them through the right amplifiers (I stick these days to pedal steel guitar amps: Sho-Buds, Peavy Nashville) can at times make their sound have the fullness and percussiveness of a piano.

Once in a while a friend finds a Spanish guitar in a garage sale, thrift shop or grandma’s attic, they bring it to me so I can tell them if I think it’s any good. After checking that the basics are working, that the neck is not bent out of shape, or the bridge about to fly off the body, the one thing I always tell them is that it’s all about the strings. In my 20+ years of playing Spanish guitars, the main thing I’ve learned is that the single most important thing you can do to improve the sound of a Spanish guitar is to put a good set of strings on it.

Spanish guitars come in a wide range of prices. You can, for example, buy this Geza Burghardt guitar for a bit over $25,000. Indeed it is a beautifully constructed guitar. The tuning machines on these high end guitars, for example, can cost over $1000 for a set and are works of art in their own right.

But as beautiful as these high end guitars are to look at, unless you are a collector, a professional classical performer, or super rich, you probably don’t want to spend that much money to get a great sounding guitar. In my experience, you don’t need to, all you need to do is invest on a guitar that works, and put some top of the line strings on it. Good strings will go a long way towards making your $50 thrift shop guitar sound like a $25,000 guitar.

Most guitar shops, even some that focus on acoustic instruments, only carry a few brands of Spanish guitar strings, often the brands that also have lines of steel strings – Martin, LaBella, D’Addario. Stay away from these. Most shops also carry Augustine strings. These are like the Burger King of guitar strings, available everywhere and fairly tasteless. To get the good strings you pretty much need to go online.

Italians, Germans and Spanish string manufacturers are constantly working on inventing better guitar strings for the Spanish guitar. I go to Strings by Mail and I have no complaints. They are constantly bringing in new models and generally have anything you may want in Spanish guitar strings at an affordable price and with great service.

For over five years, I have been trying out as many different kinds of Spanish guitar strings as I can. I keep a spreadsheet with information about each set of strings I try, what they are, when I put them on, when I took them off, if any of them broke, how they felt when I first put them on, how they felt a few days later, why did I change them, how they felt before I changed them…

I try each set several times and slowly eliminate sets that don’t work for me. Currently I’ve narrowed down the principal sets I use to a few brands, and am now in the process of combining the basses (low 3 strings) and trebles (high 3 strings) from different sets to see how these work together.

It sounds very anal and time consuming, but with Spanish guitar strings you can’t be too careful. Spanish guitar strings take some time to settle and generally are not at their prime until several days after you put them on. So I’ll change strings, play them for about a month (more or less, depending on gig and recording schedules) and change them to a different set (again, depending on gig and recording schedules, sometimes there’s no time for experimenting).

The life of a Spanish guitar string is a slow arch that can last up to a month or longer. They can take up to a week to settle (or grow up) into their prime playing condition. Then they might remain in good bright condition for many days afterwards, even up to a month or more depending on how much they are played and other conditions such as temperatures and weather conditions, at which point they’ll generally start a slow decay until finally they die. And by dead I don’t mean they break, since Spanish guitar strings usually die before they break. When they are dead, they sound dead. You don’t want to wait that long to change them.

What this means is that if you are playing regularly it’s good to know how your strings behave, and it’s good to have strings that behave consistently. For example, you would be in for a tough night if you changed strings a few hours before a show, even a day before a show could be risky without some extra considerations, but if you had to do it, you would want to know which strings settled the quickest, and which had the best initial response. On the other hand, if you have to record in a week you might want to know how much life is left to your strings, if you change them, will the new set be ready by the time you have to go record? Or do the ones you have on now still have enough life to make it through? So overall these strings require some attention.

Because of this slow life arch of Spanish guitar strings, I will not change just one string from a set because it throws off the rhythm of the whole set. Once a string breaks or dies, off comes at the very least the group to which it belongs (basses or trebles).

Spanish guitar strings can be split into three main categories: gut, nylon and polymers. Unless you are looking for something very specific, stay way from the gut strings. They are more expensive, less consistent, and require greater maintenance. The kind of research I’ve done is fairly meaningless with gut strings, every set is different. You probably also want to stay away from nylon strings. These are what you’ll find in most guitar shops, usually the low end nylon strings. There are decent nylon strings out there, but for a few dollars more you can get any of a number of polymer strings, and I think you’ll be much happier.

There are a lot of polymer strings, so I’ll cut to the chase and just tell you which strings I found to be the best, though remember that guitar strings makers are constantly coming up with new technologies for new and better strings, so what’s best today, might not be best tomorrow.

I judged the strings mainly on the quality of their sound, but also on the consistency of their sound, the behavior of the strings (how fast they settle and how soon it fades), and durability (some strings are more breakable than others). All of the sets I mention can be purchased for under $25.00 a set.

In my opinion, the best string, bar none, out there right now is the Alchemia model by Italian manufacturers Aquila. The Alchemia strings are made with Nylgut, which is a synthetic gut creation of the Aquila group. The strings have a beautiful warm sound, superior stability and overall have the richness of gut without the problems. I can’t recommend these strings enough. They settle quickly, have a long life and have the fullest sound I’ve found. On top of that the basses and trebles have a great balance. I have not found anything wrong with these strings yet. If you can have only one set of strings, this is the set to have.

Another excellent set of strings is the Genius Titanio model by Galli, another Italian company. The Titanio strings are a Titanium/Nylon polymer and were my favorite choice until I found the Alchemia set. They have a beautiful sound and the basses are stronger sounding than the Alchemia basses. Currently I’ve been trying them in combination, but have not made a decision yet. Galli has also just come out with a Genius Carbonio model, made with a carbon polymer. I’ve liked carbon polymer strings in the past and coming from Galli, I’m looking forward to trying these out. If I want smoother, rounder sounding strings, I go with the Galli. But for overall, playability and sound the Alchemia sets are still in a category all of their own.

Another great manufacturer is Hannabach, a German company that has been making strings since the 19th century. Hannabach’s new Titanyl could give the Galli Titanio strings a run for their money, but the real highlight of the Hannabach line for me is their “Durable D” single string. For some reason the D string is the one string that actually breaks fairly often in Spanish guitars, and Hannabach has created this string that settles almost as fast as a steel string, sounds great and you can buy it in singles. I always keep a few of these in my gig bag and when I break a string, I always hope it’s the D string, cuase with the Durable D the interruption to the flow of the show will be minimal.

A lot of the Spanish manufacturers (Ramirez, Savarez, Royal, Conde Hermanos) seem to fall short with the medium tension strings that I prefer (I have not found any reason to ever use high tension strings), but they make the better low tension sets that are ideal for Flamenco playing. If I was only playing Flamenco I would go with some of these sets, but my hybrid style requires a stronger string. But I’ll talk about the difference between the Flamenco and Classical guitars and their strings another week.