nylon strings on a steel string guitar
- Thread starter andyhix
- Start date
muttley600 said:Yes he does Lowdens and he has never put steel strings on a nylon strung instrument to the best of my knowledge. I've known him for over 25 years. He has played small bodied silk and steel guitars in the past. As to Pete Yarrow I have no idea.
I'm affraid it just dosent work that way. The two bracing systems are not designed to work either way. Try it for yourself but don't bitch about it when the bridge on your nylon drops or pops off the neck bows the end of the fret board dissappears into the soundhole, the tuners wont hold and the gears slip never to work again and you end up with an action that the Great Valerio could use to practice his high wire routine on.
I have only done this on cheap guitars found at garage sales or given to me because they weren't wanted. I probably should have specified that I've only tried silk and steel strings for this purpose. I assume regular steel strings would be even harder on the guitars. Things start to go wrong eventually, even with the silk and steel strings.
As far as Thompson is concerned, when I saw him play it was many years ago in a bar that holds up to maybe 150 and I was only a few feet away the whole evening. The guitar he played looked exactly like a classical acoustic and had steel strings on it. I can't recall if I got to talk to him about it after the show or not, but I think they were silk and steel strings. Perhaps it was a guitar specially made for silk and steel strings? It looked just like a classical guitar and sounded great.
As far as Peter Yarrow is concerned, my high school girlfriend's dad was one of Peter's best buddies in college, and they would get together when Peter came through town on tour. I think I remember a conversation with the two of them at my girlfriend's house about how Peter had used silk and steel strings on a classical guitar on some occasions.
Cheers,
Otto
i wish to add yet another usefull observation to this discussion.
some guitars just look like classical guitars but in fact are light gauge steel/silk steel strung parlor guitars or repliclas or modern representations of historic steel/silk strung guitars.
so for all practical purposes
NO
some guitars just look like classical guitars but in fact are light gauge steel/silk steel strung parlor guitars or repliclas or modern representations of historic steel/silk strung guitars.
so for all practical purposes
NO
faderbug said:i wish to add yet another usefull observation to this discussion.
some guitars just look like classical guitars but in fact are light gauge steel/silk steel strung parlor guitars or repliclas or modern representations of historic steel/silk strung guitars.
so for all practical purposes
NO
That's very good to know. I still have no qualms about trashing the occasional POS cheap classical guitar with silk and steel strings if it plays OK and sounds good for a while, but then I'm weird. YMMV.
Cheers,
Otto
