Acoustic Guitar Strings - My Favourites

Medium Gauge Phosphor Bronze strings [12 to 53] are my all around favourite strings for everyday acoustic playing, they are bright and alive with plenty of attack and they project well. Guitars that have a thicker soundboard may need a heavier gauge string to get the soundboard resonating, you have to work a bit harder but the payoff is in the tone and volume you get. Light gauge strings just won't do the job if you want to do justice to a Gibson J200. I also have a Yamaha APX 20 acoustic that is a shallow bodied guitar with a stereo under saddle pickup which leans more toward the way an electric guitar is played and for that I use lighter gauge strings [11 to 50] and treat it like an electric or semi-acoustic guitar. I have too many guitars so for the ones that don't get played that often coated strings like "Elixir" do a pretty good job. They maintain tone for a long time and don't corrode due to the polymer coating on the strings. Not as bright as the plain phosphor bronze and more expensive as well but they do last a long time. It takes a bit of trial and error to get an ideal match for a particular guitar. I have a small bodied acoustic with a slightly shorter string length and it just won't tune with light gauge strings. With medium gauge strings it behaves perfectly but a couple of times when I have tried light strings I had to take them off after about half an hour.When you change strings it is a great idea to keep the front of the packet to identify the gauge of strings and also to write the date you put them on. That way if they are a great string you replace them with a matched set without guessing brands and you get an idea how long they last.

Zoom H4

The Zoom H4 portable digital recorder is one essential piece of equipment that travels with us everywhere we take our acoustic guitars. We like to record our music in the open air trying catch the mood of the piece where the song first comes to life. At the creation stage we tend to use the inbuilt mics with the recorder mounted on a lightweight camera stand. The next stage we would use a pair of Shure beta 87's or EV dynamics if we are outside so we can position the mics for either optimal guitar sound or a blend of guitar and vocal. If we are indoors we use an Audio Technica 5050 switched to Figure 8 mode paired with with an Audio Technica pencil condenser
or a RODE valve mic, which are both bigger than the Zoom H4.