String selection for 10 string with E9 tuning

[John Frankel]

Need some suggestions on what strings and sizes for a 10 string pedal guitar.

[Tucker Jackson]

Need some suggestions on what strings and sizes for a 10 string pedal guitar.

Here's an article about string gauges by B0b, the late founder of this Forum.
https://b0b.com/wp/articles/e9th-gauges/

You can order strings from the Fourm online store. Service is very fast.
https://steelguitarshopper.com/e9th/?limit=20

Three things to know when purchasing string sets for E9:
1) Most brands make two varieties: Nickel or Stainless. This refers to the wound strings only. The nickel sound fatter, the stainless are brighter. I think a poll on here showed that nickel were somewhat more popular, but there is definitely a stainless contingency of folks out there.

2) The 6th string is a special case on E9, since it can be either a wound or a plain string. Your guitar is currently set up with the bellcrank leverage to work with one -- or the other. Therefore, you should buy a set of strings that specifically has the same type of 6th string as is currently on the guitar. If you have a plain 6th on there now, which is most common, buy a set with a plain 6th. The rarer sets with a wound 6th will list the 6th string with a 'w' next to it, like '.022w.'
Either that, or you can purchase a set that you like (other than the 6th), then buy the correct 6th string as an additional single string (the forum store sells singles as well).
Longer term, if you find the guitar is set up for one type of string, and you want to switch to the other, you can do that by monkeying with the pull rod and moving it to a different position on the bellcrank.

3) Some strings cost twice as much as others. I've found that they last more then twice as long. If you change your strings very regularly, the cheaper strings are fine. If you don't, it may be worth the extra cash to buy the very best you can find and leave them on the guitar a little longer. It's not just marketing, I've found it's much harder to break the high quality strings than the cheapest ones -- and I have two decades of documentation that support that (granted, I'm a sample size of one) .

[John Frankel]

Thank you

[Dave Mudgett]

As Tucker notes, a big issue with E9 strings is the choice of wound/unwound for string 6. For me, there is no option: I drop string 6 a whole tone from G# to F#, it is an essential change for me, and a wound 6th either plays/sounds wonky doing that or can't make the change at all. So plain for me. But he's correct that if you change, you will need to adjust the pulls, so I'd stick with what you're using now, until (and if) you want to do whatever is needed to change. And unless you are currently running a wound 6th string, I think any of the standard brands should work OK. GHS, SIT, D'Addario, and there are some specialty pedal steel string companies. And if you have a wound 6th, just sub a .022w or .024w string for the .020p-.022p in the pack. For starters, I'd just stick with whatever gauges are on there now. I measure string gauges with a micrometer.

If you want to go further than that - a second significant issue is nickel-wound vs. stainless-wound strings. Nickel-wound strings are generally not quite a brash-sounding and generallyl handle a stainless-steel bar with less noise. But I personally generally prefer stainless, and use a heavily-chrome-plated BJS bar or Zirconia bar, which glide over them fine. But otherwise, nickel vs. stainless is not that big a deal.

Another major issue is breakage. Personally, I've broken lots of different brands of strings with more-or-less similar frequency. Sometimes it appears that certain brands, at different times, may have defective string batches. The 3rd string - high G# - usually stresses out the most. I will very occasionally break another of the plain strings, with string 5 next most common.

Anyway - personally, I'm not stuck on brands. Sometimes I use GHS super steels, sometimes SIT, I really liked Bobbe Seymour's Cobra Coils, but they're gone. When I replace a single string on a pedal steel, I've been using juststring.com's bulk singles, which I personally find perfectly fine. However, juststrings.com seems to be on the way out now, unfortunately. One thing I have found useful about using singles like this is that I can tailor the gauges exactly the way I want them, which has more or less gotten me to, high-to-low for standard 10-string E9, 13, 15, 11.5, 14, 18, 22p, 26w, 30, 36, 42. The most common standard E9 gauges are 13, 15, 11, 14, 17, 20p, 26w, 30, 34, 36/38. I prefer slightly thicker on strings 3, 5, and 6, and go heavier on strings 9 and 10 because I like to tune them down sometimes to get a full open A6 for Western Swing with A and B pedals engaged - i.e., 9 and 10 tuned down to C# and A, respectively. And anyway, I find standard gauges a bit floppy on the low strings.

[Bobby D. Jones]

To add to the confusion, There are 3 different materials in windings on wound strings for a steel guitar.
1. Stainless Steel, 2. Nickel and 3. Nickel Plated steel.
I use SIT ST-12 strings on my keyless GFI. The package has a marked box, With red print, "Nickel Plated Steel".

[Jerry Overstreet]

I know guitar strings can be labeled pure nickel or nickel plated, but do any sellers or winders actually label any steel guitar strings as pure nickel or nickel plated or are they just marked as nickel?

[Dave Mudgett]

I know guitar strings can be labeled pure nickel or nickel plated, but do any sellers or winders actually label any steel guitar strings as pure nickel or nickel plated or are they just marked as nickel?

Pure nickel strings are generally labelled as such. And they're usually more expensive. Normally, 'nickel-wound' indicates nickel plated. The only pure nickel-wrap pedal steel strings I know about are GHS Electric Pedal Guitar Pure Nickel Rollerwound (Semi-Flat) strings, which are inverse-wound to give a smoother finish. I've used 6-string sets wound like this for guitar occasionally - think SRV - he used them, and I think that was a piece of his tonal picture.

I use regular round-wound pure-nickel strings for guitar sometimes. I like them for a somewhat smoother, old-school sound for blues, old rock and roll, jazz, and so on, when I don't want to go full-on flatwound strings. I should probably try the GHS silencers for pedal steel just to see what they're like. But if my experience from guitar is any guide, I suspect I'd probably find them not sufficiently ively for pedal steel. And aside from those GHS rollerwounds, I don't recall seeing pedal steel sets with pure-nickel round-wounds.