nylon strings on electric guitar

[darrylportelli]

So,
I have a strat copy that was my first electric guitar and I love this guitar , not because it is comfortable or because it has great tone but because it was my first electric, ie sentimental value.

since its sitting there I tought Id make some use of it,
what I had in mind is attach some piezo elements to the inside of the body cavity, replace the pickguard with one that doesnt have any holes for pups and pots, and string it with nylon strings.

how would I go about attaching the strings , since when I bought nylon's for my classical they had no ball end. are there any nylon's with ball ends. the other issue is would the machine heads damage the nylon stings.

I got the Idea from a malmsteen vid where he did the same

 

[Khaos]

Well, I'm just guessing so you better wait for other opnions.
But first I remember correctly I think I've seen ball end nylon, strings.
Ernie Ball | Products
This is just an example. And even if you can't find a ball ended classical strings, you can always tie a node on a side of a normal nylon string and it should work.

Second, I don't think that the machine heads would damage. Nylon strings may not have the bright sound of nickel ones but they are pretty resistent and elastic.

Rock on.

 

[JohnH]

Interesting - I wouldnt have guessed that that could work well, due to different string tension, action and intonation. Before hacking into the guitar, I'd suggest put some strings on and make sure you can get them to play in tune acoustically without too much buzz etc. Also, the strings are quite thick, so do they go through the holes?

I added piezo to my Ibanez Strat, mounting the piezo to block the trem. I wrote it up here in case part of it may be of interest:

GuitarNutz 2 - Adding a Piezo pickup

 

[Khaos]

Interesting - I wouldnt have guessed that that could work well, due to different string tension, action and intonation. Before hacking into the guitar, I'd suggest put some strings on and make sure you can get them to play in tune acoustically without too much buzz etc. Also, the strings are quite thick, so do they go through the holes?

I added piezo to my Ibanez Strat, mounting the piezo to block the trem. I wrote it up here in case part of it may be of interest:

GuitarNutz 2 - Adding a Piezo pickup

+1
Yeah, leave the strings on the guitar for a while and see if they don't go out of tune, you can move on.

 

[darrylportelli]

they will most definately go out of tune. even on me manuel rodriguez classical , I had about 2 weeks of stretching time until they set in.

JohnH, that is exactly what I want to do, put a piezo element from the electronics store in the strat., however I think Ill add a small circuit buffer to match the impedance of the piezo to the amp.

how does yours sound?. Ill read the whole article when I get the chance tomorrow morning

thanks

 

[Frankie]

If your Strat has a 6 separate saddles there's no reason you couldn't just tie them to the saddles like a classical. I mean, sure you won't be going through the body, but if you're going for a nylon piezo sound that probably doesn't matter.

 

[MonstersOfTheMidway]

You will end up breaking the nylon string or experience a lot of inconsistent tunning problems with slippage before you even get it up to standard tuning pitch (I think that the string will nylon string will break even if you were to use a whole step below standard tunning. The tension that can be tolerated on a nylon string is not the same as that of a electric guitar string. Also, if you got any sharp edges at the bridge saddles, nut, tuner, or string tree, that string is gonna pop. Broken nylong strings or tunning problems ahead.

 

[Frankie]

I had a classical acoustic and gave that fucker away because it was always out of tune.

 

[chuckharmonjr]

Ok. Im curious about something. Metal strings vibrating thru a toroidal magnetic field produces the current fluctuations that create the signal. How in the hell can nylon strings create that effect with the pickups? Its a magnetic field...not a laser range finder.

 

[darrylportelli]

Ok. Im curious about something. Metal strings vibrating thru a toroidal magnetic field produces the current fluctuations that create the signal. How in the hell can nylon strings create that effect with the pickups? Its a magnetic field...not a laser range finder.

that is why in my post I said I will install a piezo element.

piezo elements are a disk like object having piezo crystals sandwiched in a piece of metal. when these crystals feel pressure ie. Vibrationof the guitar body, these send out a voltage signal

therefore there will be no magnetic pups, I will remove the original pickguard and replace it with one that has no pup holes. so actually what the piezo pups are picking up are vibrations not changes in magnetic field



also
then how did malmsteen and some others on youtube put nylon's on an electric??
thanks

 

[Australian]

It wont work-like Chuck said.

I tried in my early days of playing guitar, and if you want an idea of how it sounds-just loosen your electric guitar strings about three full turns and that will be 100% better than the flappy sound you'll get.

 

[darrylportelli]

Interesting - I wouldnt have guessed that that could work well, due to different string tension, action and intonation. Before hacking into the guitar, I'd suggest put some strings on and make sure you can get them to play in tune acoustically without too much buzz etc. Also, the strings are quite thick, so do they go through the holes?

I added piezo to my Ibanez Strat, mounting the piezo to block the trem. I wrote it up here in case part of it may be of interest:

GuitarNutz 2 - Adding a Piezo pickup

what I plan to do is first build this small circuit
http://www.scotthelmke.com/Mint-box-buffer.html

it is a jfet buffer which I will test on my very anemic sounding piezo equipped acoustic guitar. If it makes significant ammount of improvement on the tone than I will put piezo elements on the strat copy and add this circuit

 

[JohnH]

darrylportelli - when you read through my description, at the end of the thread there are some sound samples.

That mint box buffer is OK, but it has no amplification, ie no gain (in the true sense - not meaning distortion), hence you will likely get a very weak signal. The circuit I used is an alternative, and just the first stage of it will boost the piezo signal up some db's.

 

[darrylportelli]

It wont work-like Chuck said.

I tried in my early days of playing guitar, and if you want an idea of how it sounds-just loosen your electric guitar strings about three full turns and that will be 100% better than the flappy sound you'll get.

than how did the people on the youtube vids I saw do it? do you have any ideas cos I really want to try this out!!!

ex
[ame=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2GXEfsDBGic]Nylon Stratocaster - YouTube[/ame]

 

[chuckharmonjr]

Gotcha on the piezo...missed that.

 

[Australian]

than how did the people on the youtube vids I saw do it? do you have any ideas cos I really want to try this out!!!

ex
Nylon Stratocaster - YouTube

It sounds like crap. No sustain. Hes got scalloped frets that would help a bit, but hmmm it sounds preety bad, like he's muting every note.
Personally I'd spend the time organizing my sock draw rather than doing that unfruitful exercise.

 

[darrylportelli]

It sounds like crap. No sustain. Hes got scalloped frets that would help a bit, but hmmm it sounds preety bad, like he's muting every note.
Personally I'd spend the time organizing my sock draw rather than doing that unfruitful exercise.

I kinda like that sound he's getting. It's not a classical guitar sound, its not electric guitar sound but a new timbre, sort of a new instrument, you can get sounds that you cant get other wise

 

[Australian]

I kinda like that sound he's getting. It's not a classical guitar sound, its not electric guitar sound but a new timbre, sort of a new instrument, you can get sounds that you cant get other wise

If you could somehow get more tension on the strings you'd have something. Give it a go, but because there is such a lack of tension on the strings, its not much fun to play.

 

[darrylportelli]

If you could somehow get more tension on the strings you'd have something. Give it a go, but because there is such a lack of tension on the strings, its not much fun to play.

hey Australian,
That is exactly what I want actually, I wanted to try the feel of less tension on an electric. I am just experimenting for fun you see. I would like to see what the nylon strings, which on a classical guitar have a tremendously different feel from steel strings, feel like on electric, and see what sounds I can create!!

Im gonna change the strings on my classical soon cos their sonding a bit dead and they did their fair share. when I change them Ill use the old strings on the electric see what happens (cos classical strings are damn expensive.)

btw I really wanna try gut strings on the classical. I bet baroque sounds wonderful on gut strings!!!!

 

[JohnH]

I thought that the YouTube video sounded quite good, if you like classical shredding – I wish I could play that well. On the occasional note where he lets the sound ring, the sustain seems similar enough to most nylon strung guitars. Nylon is a lot more stretchy than steel, so you’d expect many more turns on the tuner to get it up to pitch – but you will see soon enough when you test it.

Once you have tested the viability of putting the strings on, my suggestion for the next step is to get a piezo element and try putting it in different places – on the pick guard, or squeezed by the trem (as I did) etc. Don’t worry about a preamp for first tests, just wire it into a switched off non-tru-bypass pedal, such as anything by Boss, then from that to an amp or PA system. That will let you know roughly what signal you will get, and how the tone and signal level needs to be fixed by any preamp. Then you can work out what the preamp needs to achieve – and Id be happy to discuss further.