A recurring problem for me in Istanbul is when I need to buy new strings for my folk guitar. In Brittany, most guitar players that play Breton music commonly use hard strings (usually Martin medium) whereas in Istanbul you can almost only find Light strings, despite of the large amount of music shops available. Therefore, I usually have to buy my strings from Brittany or from the web.
Playing hard strings has various consequences :
- First of all, such hard strings can make guitar playing be very painful for your fingers.
- The guitar itself has to be strong enough to stand resulting strains.
But look, this is what I have found last week in a Breton music shop :
Yes this is even stronger than Medium strings (gauges are between 0.13 and 0.56), these are HEAVY strings, yes (gauges range from 0.14 up to 0.59) !
You may say, “this starts to sound like bass guitar strings !”. Indeed, I used to play with a combination of guitar and bass strings (using a bass string as lowest D, but this is now over !
Let’s go and try my new HEAVY strings, my fingers and my guitar have to get used to 🙂 !
§ Yann
. astrakan project . 