I was trying to get back into playing guitar. I only took lessons for a few years with a nylon string guitar that was fairly cheap. When I pulled the guitar out of the attic it needed new strings so I purchased medium steel strings. I know regret not getting light strings. However, I am wondering if there is a difference between the fret board of a nylon guitar and a steel guitar. I know medium strings are harder to press down but I need to used a ridiculous amount of force to get a good sound and sometimes I feel like the frets seem lower on my guitar. Is the guitar only made to be used with nylon strings?
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Duplicate of music.stackexchange.com/questions/8122/…– Dave JacobyAug 29, 2013 at 16:38
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4@VarLogRant: Although it is a duplicate, that question is not very clear on actually being putting steel strings on a nylon guitar (although the answer is). This is a much clearer question to that fact, and serves as a better reference for others having the same question.– aweAug 30, 2013 at 8:08
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@awe Fair enough.– Dave JacobyAug 30, 2013 at 14:05
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3 Answers
Remove the steel strings immediately. They will permanently damage your guitar.
Do not use light-gauge steel strings either. You should only use nylon strings on this guitar.
Steel strings put much more tension on the neck of a guitar compared to nylon strings.
Guitars designed for steel strings have very stiff, strong necks with a metal truss rod inside the neck designed to counteract the additional tension from the steel strings.
Classical guitars designed for nylon strings generally do not have a truss rod in the neck, and the neck is built only to withstand the lower tension of the nylon strings.
Furthermore, the top of the classical guitar and the bridge are braced underneath only to withstand the much lower tension of the nylon strings.
If you keep those steel strings on your guitar, the neck will permanently bend and warp, the top of the guitar will "belly up" and warp, and the bridge will eventually rip loose from where it is glued to the top of the guitar, taking a good deal of the wood of the top of the guitar with it. Your guitar will be ruined. It will not be feasible to repair the damage.
Never, never put steel strings on a classical guitar built for nylon strings.
Update:
I did the maths based on data from string sets at the D'Addario string company web site.
A typical set of regular-gauge steel acoustic guitar strings puts 179 lbs (81.3kg) of tension on a guitar.
A typical set of nylon strings puts 83.6 lbs (37.9kg) of tension on a guitar.
Therefore if you put steel strings on a classical guitar, you are more than doubling the amount of tension and strain that the classical guitar has been built to handle.
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very good answer, though I question the numbers for string tension. The nylon string values seem a bit strong...IOW the situation is even more dire! I'm in full agreement that putting a set of medium steel strings on a gut string guitar will most likely literally rip the neck off the body over time.– dwozAug 13, 2015 at 15:35
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One can get sets of electric guitar strings whose tension would be less than those of nylon strings. The tension required to produce a given pitch is roughly inversely proportional to cross-sectional area, so a set of 8's would have only about 45% as much tension as a set of 12's. On the other hand, even when using 8's one should still be careful because the amount of over-cranking necessary to increase the tension of a set of 8's by 50% is far less than would be required to increase the tension of nylon strings likewise.– supercatFeb 13, 2019 at 16:35
A classical guitar is built for the tension of nylon string guitars. I suspect, if you put steel strings on a nylon string guitar, it'd sound fantastic ...
- except intonation will be off, as nylon-string classical bridges are straight and steel string bridges are angled, to compensate for the tension of steel strings
- on the low frets, because classical guitars have no truss rods to hold the neck straight under the tension of steel strings, so the neck bending should make the action on the high frets way high
- until the tension pulls the bridge off the body, or does other damage to the instrument
Also, fret material for steel strings is harder, so you'd do damage to the frets, if the guitar lasts that long.
Seriously, classical strings on classical guitars.
answered Aug 29, 2013 at 16:43
As others have pointed out, this is probably a bad idea. If you still want to consider it, mind the string tension. A typical nylon strings set has a total tension of around 80 pounds. You definitely don't want to replace that with a typical acoustic steel set, which is almost double that.
Some electric guitar strings, e.g. D'Addario EXL130 or EXL120, are in a safer range (70-85 pounds). Still not sure how well they might work, but at least they should not physically destroy your guitar in short time.
