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How Can I Mute Squeaky Guitar Strings?

I've just bought a new guitar strung with D'Addario extended-play steel strings. I'm not accustomed to acoustic guitars and am surprised by how loud these strings are as I slide over them making chords. Anything to be done to mute this sound?

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    As the strings get older eventually they will 'squeak' less and you will get used to the sound. I remember when I just started playing and hated the squeaking sound of the strings, until I told my guitar teacher about it. He just told me that it's a natural part of playing acoustic and you can always hear it. Don't worry too much about it.
    Besides I personally believe that it gives the guitar a certain sound which reminds me of a cello, which sounds very Minorish and beautiful.
    In Incubus - Mexico you can hear how good it actually sounds with the squeaks of the guitar.
    1 0

    Rako2000 

    answered 10 months ago

      The strings will get less squeaky as they get older. Don't worry about it.
      0 0

      Mtapply 

      answered 1 year ago

        Not unless you use plastic or gut classical guitar strings (which are more expensive, but not by that much), and you can still hear some sliding around.  However, even most classical guitarists use metal wound strings on the three lower ones just for projection purposes.  You can cover the sound up on an electric guitar with distortion, but that's just masking it with another noise.  
        0 1

        Joesmith40 

        answered 1 year ago

        Thank you.
        Report
        Carmichael

        Carmichael

        commented 1 year ago

        FYI

        If you put gut or nylon strings on an electric guitar you would lose all output (they will not disturb the magnetic field of the pick-ups)

        Electro Acoustic Guitars usually use piezoelectric bugs that pick up the vibration from a surface inside the guitar (usually under the bridge or underside of the soundboard)

        HTH
        Report
        Bluesman

        Bluesman

        commented 10 months ago

        Good technique eliminates a lot of the squeaking, but even the masters (Andres Segovia for instance) make/made squeaks whilst playing, if you use flat-wound or ground-wound strings, they won't squeak as much (but don't sound as bright as round wound IMO)



        Segovia making some (small) squeaks ;-)  (A small one at approx 11 secs and another at 49 secs -I am sure you could find more if you listen carefully )

        Engineering techniques to eliminate squeak on recordings would be to program an automation mute/volume cut on the offending track on your DAW, or to copy the offending part to a new track, and invert the phase of the offending squeak and thus eliminate it by phase cancellation.

        The best advice I could give is to practice lots (and lots more ;-)  ), and to not get too frustrated at the noises that "escape by mistake"  ;-)

        HTH

        0 1

        Bluesman 

        answered 11 months ago

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