There is no doubt that strings greatly affect the tone and playability of your electric guitar. Let’s face it, if you don’t want it to be just another percussion instrument in your collection, you need strings.
And when it comes to Fender electric guitar strings, there are a lot of factors to consider as you decide which set to purchase, such as the musical genre you want to play, how often you play and your guitar’s scale.
For ALICE’s slate of electric guitar strings, these things will impact those factors:
– Gauge
– Materials
– Core
– Winding Method
“String gauge” refers to the size of the string, as in how thick, measured in thousandths of an inch. The gauges for a six-stringed guitar range from the smallest on the high E string and level up to the B, G, D, A and low E strings.
Generally, lighter gauge strings are easier to play, brighter, allow you to bend strings and fret notes easier, and exert less tension on your guitar’s neck.
On the other hand, lighter gauges offer less sustain and volume, and can break more regularly.
Meanwhile, heavier gauges give you more volume and sustain, allow you to dig in and play harder, and are typically preferred for drop-tunings and alternate tunings. Still, the increased size adds more tension and can be more difficult to bend and fret.
As a rule of thumb, if you want to play fast leads and chords, light gauges may be the way to go (metal players with a preference for drop-D tuning would still need a heavy gauge for the lower strings or wound strings). Lots of blues and rock guitarists land on medium gauges that offer the benefits of both worlds, while jazz guitarists who don’t bend a lot of notes tend to use heavy gauges, sometimes with a wound G string.
ALICE is made of steel, so they properly transmit the string vibrations to the magnetic pickups. The low E, A, and D strings are wound with various alloys, while the G, B, and high E strings are tin-plated.