Electric guitar strings on classical guitar? Oh, yeah!

Myth and truth

You're here because you want a brighter sound on your classical guitar like on the acoustic and you can't stand that muddy nylon sound anymore. But isn't it dangerous to put metal strings on a classical guitar? Wouldn't that screw up the guitar in a few minutes or so?

Yes, we all know the story, metal strings on a classical guitar breaks the instrument in two, rips the bridge off the top or bends the neck like a bow and so on, because classical guitars don't have truss rods inside the neck. Yea, yea, yea...

First of all, you miss the point, or the scientific factor: the tension of a string, regardless of the material. That's the most important thing you should take into account when purchasing any kind of strings.

The story about the screwed up guitar after getting metal strings could be true, but only if those strings are high tension bronze "wires" for acoustic guitars (I hate those so called strings). That's the only case.

So, yes, you can put metal strings on a classical guitar, ie. electric guitar strings. Some nylon strings have even a higher tension than electric guitar strings and might damage (bow) the guitar in time more than those "scary" steel strings.

Facts:

Nylon strings have an average tension of about 15 lbs (~7 kg). Guess what? The average electric guitar strings have the same tension! (You gotta be kidding me...) And, of course, like I said, acoustic guitar strings (the really scary ones) have double the tension of those (about 30 lbs or ~14 kg) and might actually crack your classical guitar in two (it could be a matter of minutes or hours before you hear the "explosion").

Saying that, have fun buying, mounting and playing electric guitar strings on your classical guitar and relax, because they won't do any harm to your instrument.

But be careful not to mix up electric guitar strings with acoustic guitar strings. The strings for electric guitars are nickel wounded steel strings and for acoustic guitars they are bronze / phosphor strings. It shouldn't be hard to chose the right ones. Just read the information on the package before you buy them.

One more thing I should tell you about. Tension also means gauge. So, the average gauge of electric guitar strings is between about 10 and 40 (0,010 - 0,040 in). For instance, I'm using D'Addario EXL electric guitar strings of 9-42 gauge with an average tension of 13,5 lbs (~6 kg) on both my electric and my classical guitar now.

Simple electric guitar setup instructions

(for Les Paul and other 2 pickup guitars with toggle switch)


1) Chords strumming, chords picking, clean solo

* Chords strumming (like on the acoustic guitar):
    a) Guitar toggle switch: both pickups
    b) Guitar tone pots: on 10
    c) Amp tone pots: treble higher than bass and mids: Bass(\) Mids(\) Treble(/)
    d) Amp gain: no overdrive/distortion (aka. clean)
  
* Chords picking (eg. for ballads):
    a) Guitar toggle switch: both pickups
    b) Guitar tone pots: on 10
    c) Amp tone pots: treble higher than bass and mids: Bass(\) Mids(\) Treble(/)
    d) Amp gain: no overdrive/distortion (aka. clean)
    e) Amp/Pedal effect: Chorus
  
* Clean solo:
    a) Guitar toggle switch: mostly neck pickup, but also both pickups, rarely bridge pickup
    b) Guitar tone pots: on 0 if Jazz, respectively on 10 if anything else
    c) Amp tone pots: treble higher than bass and mids: Bass(\) Mids(\) Treble(/)
    d) Amp gain: no overdrive/distortion (aka. clean)
    e) Amp/Pedal effect: Reverb


2) Blues, Country, Rock'n'Roll, Classic Rock

* Blues:
    a) Guitar toggle switch: mostly neck pickup
    b) Guitar tone pots: on 10
    c) Amp tone pots: tone pots at equal level (muddy sound): Bass(\) Mids(\) Treble (\)
    d) Amp gain: overdrive between 0% and 33% (aka. clean or crunch)
    e) Amp/Pedal effect: Reverb

* Country:
    a) Guitar toggle switch: mostly bridge pickup
    b) Guitar tone pots: on 10
    c) Amp tone pots: treble higher than bass and mids: Bass(\) Mids(\) Treble(/)
    d) Amp gain: overdrive 33% (aka. crunch)
    e) Amp/Pedal effect: a very short Echo/Delay (small pub stage sound)
    f) If possible, single coil or coil split bridge pickup configuration (quacky sound)

* Rock'n'Roll:
    a) Guitar toggle switch: mostly bridge pickup
    b) Guitar tone pots: on 10
    c) Amp tone pots: mids higher than bass and treble (vintage sound): Bass(\) Mids(/) Treble(\)
    d) Amp gain: overdrive 33% (aka. crunch)
    e) Amp/Pedal effect: a very short Echo/Delay

* Classic Rock:
    a) Guitar toggle switch: mostly bridge pickup (mandatory for power chords)
    b) Guitar tone pots: on 10
    c) Amp tone pots: mids higher than bass and treble (vintage sound): Bass(\) Mids(/) Treble(\) - or out of phase in the middle position with equal tone setup
    d) Amp gain: overdrive 66% (aka. overdrive no. 1)
    e) Amp/Pedal effect: Reverb


3) Hard Rock, Metal

* Hard Rock:
    a) Guitar toggle switch: only bridge pickup
    b) Guitar tone pots: on 10
    c) Amp tone pots: treble higher than bass and mids: Bass(\) Mids(\) Treble(/)
    d) Amp gain: overdrive 100% (aka. overdrive no. 2)

* Metal:
    a) Guitar toggle switch: only bridge pickup
    b) Guitar tone pots: on 10
    c) Amp tone pots: mids below bass and treble (Metallica sound): Bass(/) Mids(\) Treble(/)
    d) Amp gain: overdrive 100% (aka. overdrive no. 2)
    e) Preferable, hot humbucker bridge pickup (~14 .. 16 kΩ) for high output distortion

Best sounding pickup configuration

Many years after vintage Fender and Gibson guitars tore the stage in the hands of famous Rock 'n' Roll guitarists, new players of the 80's and 90's went for a different kind of guitar, the HS or HSS.

Fender Stratocaster HSS (Fat Strat)

Fender Telecaster HS

These guitars have a humbucker (H) in the bridge position, a single coil pickup (S) in the neck position (see the Telecaster above) and some of them another single coil pickup (S) in the middle position (like the Stratocaster).

What's the deal? Well, if you want a bright sounding guitar, you'll need single coils, at least one. Since the bridge sound is already bright enough, you don't want a thin sounding single coil in that position. You want a hot pickup and the humbucker is just what you need. Especially if you're into Metal and want to rip the speakers with hard and heavy power chords in the bridge position. Besides, guitar noise is usually stronger in that position and a humbucker in place of a single coil pickup solves the problem. But It should be an average 7-8 kΩ humbucker, not a hot one above 14 kΩ. Neck humbuckers have usually normal output and you can put one of those in the bridge position.

So, yeah, we put a humbucker in the bridge position. But what about the rest of the guitar? What kind of pickups do we choose next? Well, not humbuckers again because, after all, we still need that bright sound. We're fed up with that muddy Les Paul sound because we don't play Blues or Jazz all the time. We also play Country, Funk, Metal and so on. We need brightness. We need some single coil pickups.

The whole idea is to normalize the sound across the guitar, more precisely from the bridge to the neck. The strings vibration increases from bridge to neck. That means you'll need a hotter pickup in the bridge position and a weaker pickup in the neck position in order to reach a balanced sound.

The point is... go get a HS or HSS guitar, man! Or just split coil your neck humbucker if you can. I did this on my Les Pauls and they sound great.

Peter Green mod without flipping the magnet

Peter Green with the famous Greenie

Oh, yes, the Peter Green mod. A very nice one.

You know the story. The guy from the guitar workshop screwed up Peter Green's Les Paul and mounted the neck humbucker with a flipped magnet. The result: out of phase or reversed polarity of the neck pickup and a weird nasal sound in the middle position. The guy realized something's wrong and tried different workarounds to solve the problem. The best thing he could came up with was to rotate the pickup with the screw poles towards the bridge. Of course that didn't change anything, because you can't reverse the polarity by moving the pickup around. If he knew, he could just flip the magnet the other way and fix the damn pickup.

The best part is that everybody absolutely loved that sound and it earned its place in the history of blues guitar. That's the reason you are here. You want that sound. You want to "mess up" your guitar too.

The problem is it's a little bit exhausting and difficult to dismount, crack open and flip the magnet of a humbucker.

Good news! You can invert the phase without flipping the magnet and it works with single coil pickups too. How? Well, you mess around with the other end of the pickup. You just invert the neck pickup wires inside the control cavity of your guitar. Instead of ground to the case and hot to the pin of the volume pot, you solder the wires the other way around. And, voila, your pickup is now electrically out of phase (not magnetically like the original).

The only impediment here is that, compared to the flipped magnet state, the pickup with inverted wiring is now out of phase with the whole universe, not just the other pickup. Replacing the ground with the hot wire is like sitting on your head. It's against nature. So, the pickup basically objects to this by humming and buzzing like a single coil. It doesn't matter if it's a humbucker. You'll need the same tricks and tools as for a single coil to make it quiet (AC grounding, noise gates, etc).

Brighten up any humbucker (the screw coil tweak)

You probably heard of and did lots of mods on your guitar, hoping to brighten up your humbuckers and make them sound more like single coils.

This is not possible without splitting and leaving just one coil of the humbucker active. It's easy to do that even with the old 2 conductor humbuckers, by soldering the link wire to the ground, but you will go mad afterwards because you will lose half of the output. This is a real problem if you have average output humbuckers of 7-8 kΩ, because the split coil has about 4 kΩ output, less than a vintage single coil pickup of at least 5-6 kΩ.

What can be done? Well, it would be nice if we could keep both coils of the humbucker active and enhance the sound, without losing output. They say, if you lower the pickup and increase the distance between the pole pieces and the strings, you'll get a cleaner sound. But, again, this affects the output volume, even if you still have full pickup impedance.

Good news! There is another way and it doesn't harm the output of the humbucker, nor the guitar. It's all about the pole pieces position, more precisely the screws.

Screw pole pieces adjustment

Instead of lowering the whole pickup and raise the screws out of the holes, making them look like Total Recall eye popping, you do the opposite. You lower the screws completely inside the holes and leave the pickup up high close to the strings for optimal output, like this:

Seymour Duncan Jazz pickup

with lowered screw pole pieces

What happens? It's obvious. The screw coil loses tie to the strings, but not completely. Not like a dead split coil. It just receives less strings vibration. This coil has now a dull output sound and decreased volume. The other one, the slug coil, has the usual single coilish sound which is now the main coil of the humbucker. The resulting sound of the tweaked humbucker will be the combination of the two and it's a very bright and clean sound with full pickup impedance. The bridge humbucker has even a slightly quacky sound now.

Compared to other pickups, one might say it will sound like a P90, because of the large winding and just one row of active pole pieces.

P90 soap bar pickup

This simple tweak makes a huge difference in sound but leaves the guitar as it is. You don't void the warranty and you don't damage the guitar by applying crazy irreversible mods.

Yes, of course, you can go so far as to remove the screws all together and leave that coil without poles.

Humbucker with removed screw pole pieces

The sound will be even brighter and the pickup will get closer to a P90. But, man, it looks just like a piece of garbage with 6 holes in it. I really don't like that picture. Do you?