ooh im in ottawa for the summer, i was going to go down to steve's music

spacerman is better?

I put a set of .011 gauge elixirs on my electric and they maintained a nice, full sound for a little while. no strings will retain that sound for too long though, so you'll either have to change them often or deal with it

oh gawd i have no idea what that 0.011 even means lol

and my current strings it's not a problem of them retaining sound, it's them sounding like trash brand new!

Because I was afk

Generally, the heavier your strings and the thicker your pick, the better tone you will get. Also, the brand of string is obviously important. Switch back to medium strings, and maybe you just bought a shitty brand?

the .011 refers to the width of the high e. gauges go from like... .007 to .013 or something. I'd say .010 is probably a good width for an electric, but since you're a beginner, i'd recommend .009 or .008 since you have weaker fingers.

also, your current strings are probably just a crappy brand. I'd recommend looking at d'addario, elixir, and ernie ball

This is what I was eventually getting at last night, but was too high and an iPhone just doesn't cut it lol.

You should go to a music store, that sells more than just starter beginner stuff, and ask for some Ernie Ball Super Slinkys, usually in a pink packet, and come between 0.9 and 0.11 guages. You don't need to "understand" guages, just know that it means thickness of string and the lower the guage number, the easier it is to bend the string.

Your strings are the only issue - guitar is fine, plectrum is fine, playing style is probably fine.

thanks a lot guys i'll definitely drop by a guitar store later this evening or tomorrow, and my fingers are pretty weak like I have trouble getting good sound from certain bar chords because i just cant seem to hold them all down, usually there's 1 string that is just muted. any ideas what brand/gauge or whatever would be most helpful for this but still produce a full sound?

9guage - 11guage. They are the only strings you'll ever need if you aren't dropping to a stupid low drop metal tuning.

You'll immediately feel and hear the difference with 9s or 11s.

Just ask them about the .008 gauge ernie ball slinkies. The super slinkies are .009, and they'll work, but I recommend a .008 to beginners just because they're really easy to work with. When you're more used to actually just playing things, then you'll want to push your gauge above what you can handle so your fingers will strengthen, but while you're still learning some basics it's important to just learn those and not struggle with your strings.

Also, I'm making these recommendations under the assumption you're in standard tuning. If you're dropping things, you'll probably want a thicker gauge.

This post was edited by Derkaderk on May 20 2011 01:43pm