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Nylon folk strings


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No, a folk guitar with nylon strings sounds quite different from a classical guitar or flamenco guitar with nylon strings, so it's still a flavour I am curious about, as I don't want to duplicate my existing concert guitar collection here on the east coast and would rather get something that isn't redundant. But it is indeed possible that the narrower neck of a folk guitar would be less conducive to nylon string playing, just as with 'ukuleles, where pro models tend to have different neck widths than intermediate ones.

 

I don't think I'll be doing this any time soon though. Instead, I've ordered some 80/20 strings (I currently have none) for an Epiphone Frontier acoustic guitar that I ordered to compensate for not having been able to fit any in my car on my cross-country drive. The Frontier sounds great and doesn't seem redundant in my collection at all. But I am going to need SOMETHING with nylon strings soon, as I will get to my bossa tunes for final guitar takes before long.

 

My experience is that nylon strings generally need a bit higher action than steel strings and a slimmer neck makes it much more difficult to avoid your fingers colliding with nearby strings. I am 6'2"+ so my fingers are pretty large. The entire reason I sold my Rainsong WS9000 nylon string was that the neck was 1 3/4" wide at the nut, which would be considered fairly wide for a steel string guitar. I had the action reasonably low for a nylon string and I just could not navigate that fretboard successfully with the nylon strings. The Yamaha nylon string guitar I have now has a 2" wide fretboard and I am much happier with it.

 

In general with any type of strings or guitar, I've preferred the overall feel of slightly wide necks in my hand- but I've come to realize that over the years I've also enjoyed slightly narrow string-spacing more and more, often fretting two strings with one fingertip which frees-up the other fingers. I may wind up going with standard or somewhat wide nut-width but with narrower string-spacing in the nut-slots. That also allows a little more room for vibrato on the outside 1st- and 6th-Strings.

Ask yourself- What Would Ren and Stimpy Do?

 

~ Caevan James-Michael Miller-O'Shite ~

_ ___ _ Leprechaun, Esquire _ ___ _

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