I bought my son a cheap acoustic guitar to start out on and see if he is going to be interested in playing. well,he was playing it the other day and a string broke. No problem,I go get a new set of strings. but the strings are way longer than they need to be. Do I just tighten them up and cut off the extra? thanks!!

 

yes, make sure you get a good few turns about the post before you snip snip

 

my bro plays guitar, He has to cut all his strings. i think the strings are a universal thing

 

I bought my 10 year old son, who has Asperger's Disorder, a "cheap" acoustic guitar because he expressed an interest in playing but was saddened by the fact that it just didn't play like the one's on the radio. I told him he needed lessons! LOL!

Anyway, I broke a string trying to tune it and had a good set of Martin strings installed and the "cheap" guitar sounds good even though it hasn't been out of it's bag in almost a year!

 

Use nylon strings. Easier on the finger and sounds better than the metallic strings.

 

I would get a tuner also to prevent over tightening the strings.

 

Wait until he wants a 12 string unit, Oh Brother!!!!!!!
I posted somewhere that I USED to play.
I made a twin neck, which some punk stole!
But I always loved the sound of the 12'er!

Remind him of the late Henny Youngman most famous statement,,,,

"Practice,Practice,Practice!"

 

I have a "cheap" acoustic-electric that I've had for about 10 years now. We had to shave the bridge down a little, and it needs refinished badly. But the thing sounds great. We've had people offer me almost twice what I paid for it because of the way it plays and sounds. It rivals the Alvarez 2 my uncle had.

 

That's a matter of personal taste. I prefer the sound of steel strings and for most of the playing I do, nylon just won't cut it. But there are time when I enjoy the sound of nylon strings, for Classical and Flamenco it really is the way to go.

BTW, don't put nylon strings on a guitar designed for steel strings, it won't tune and play properly due to the vastly different string tension and diameter and definitely don't put steel strings on a nylon string guitar, the top is braced very lightly for the low tension nylon strings and putting high tension steel strings on it can destroy the guitar.




Cheap guitars can be detrimental to learning the guitar. If it sounds and/or plays like crap, a beginner doesn't enjoy playing it as much and so often will not practice as much. Kind of hard to justify plonking down a bundle of cash for a new Martin for a beginner when you're not sure if they're going to stick with it or not, but there are plenty of relatively inexpensive guitars that do sound good. If you're not a picker yourself, get someone who is to go with you to try out some guitars or get their recommendations before ordering a guitar online. (I prefer to play a guitar before buying, as two indentical guitars can sound different and one may just be the one that "grabs" you...)

The above is not aimed at any one particular poster, just my general ramblings on a subject near and dear to me...

 

^ What he said. Also, when you put the new strings on give them a little bit of slack before you tighten them. You want to try to get them to wrap around the nut a few times. Guitars have to be tuned generally every time you play them. Every time you tune the guitar the strings are getting tighter. Hence why you want to give it a bit of slack.

When you get the strings on youll have to stretch them. What i do is put my left hand on a fret, say the 10th fret and pull the string somewhat hard right behind that. Then go down the neck at like say the 8th fret and repeat. Then re-tune, play a few riffs, stretch, re-tune etc.

When starting out w/o calluses it is indeed pretty painful. I remember playing and thinking my fingers where gonna start bleeding any minute. You can get "light" strings if this is a problem. However he should work his way up to at least medium. I know, at first its going to seem impossible to barre anything with medium strings but when you get the flow of things its effortless.

Light strings as you probably assumed give a lighter sound. I like medium strings they sound great and have a full sound.