What are Guitar Strings?

Ever wanted to know what guitar strings are? People are always talking about guitar strings this and guitar strings that, it's all so confusing..

Guitar strings have been around for quite some time. The first guitar strings were made from gut and installed on a guitar around 1265. The first guitars contained 4 pairs of strings until around 1551 when the fifth pair of strings was added. In 1770, the pairs were replaced by single strings and changed to six strings in total.

The early guitarists used gut as their guitar string material until 1946 when nylon guitar strings were introduced. Finally, steel guitar strings were introduced and the rest is history. Rock was born with the introduction of steel guitar strings and the Fender and Gibson electric guitar. Guitar tablatures were written and guitarists were learning chords to their favorite songs by their favorite bands.

So, back to the question.. "What are Guitar Strings?"..

A guitar string is a string made of a particular material, typically, gut, nylon or steel, which is spanned over a wooden instrument or an instrument which has magnetic or piezoelectric pickups. The purpose of the string is to vibrate and produce a particular musical note. A standard guitar has 6 strings and is tuned in the following configuration, E-A-D-G-B-E.

For the wooden or acoustic guitars, the sound is produced by the vibration of the strings which is amplified by the wooden body of the guitar. For the electric guitars, the sound is produced by the vibration of the strings which is transferred into an electric signal using piezo-electric pickups or magnetic pickups and is then amplified using basic signal amplification techniques.

We hope this lesson was fun and informative.