Magic

I made a mistake the last time I bought a set of strings two weeks ago. I had intended to get Martins again, but the store I went to, SoundChaser, did not have them. My instinct told me to leave and go to Victoria Plaza where I bought my Martins in February (the set that lasted me more than three months), but then I saw a set of Fender acoustic guitar strings that were labeled “light.” I checked it out and found that its label said the high “E” was .012 and the low “W” was .053. Good enough, I told myself, but when I opened the package I felt the strings were a little too thin. Again my instinct told me to just leave, but when I found out that it was only 175 pesos I decided to buy one. I even got a pleasant surprise when I paid for it because a discount brought it down to 166 pesos.

But when I restrung my guitar with the Fenders I was dismayed because my instinct was correct: the strings were too thin to be the lights I was used to, and my guitar felt a little limp in my hands when I played. The sound was passable enough, but the “feel” was not there: no bounce, no tug, no satisfying resistance from the strings. And I knew that too-thin strings would not last: they would soon grow thinner and thinner, until the strings begin to buzz and they become impossible to tune.

The worst part was that because they were too light, some of the strings buzzed as they hit frets higher up in the neck. To remedy this I placed a shim under the bridge nut and adjusted the neck’s truss rod to give a little “bow.” It eased the guitar’s buzzing somewhat, but the downside was the strings were a little too high.

So today I did what I should have done in the first place: I went to Victoria Plaza and got myself the Martin strings. Before I installed them I remembered to take out the shim under the bridge and adjusted the truss rod back to its original position. But something must have happened as I turned the rod – maybe I didn’t turn enough, or maybe I turned too much, or maybe it was magic – but when the strings were on I had a perfect guitar! The strings were low but there was no buzz, and the intonation all over the neck was near perfect!

I still can’t get over how well my guitar plays and sounds now. At the office all I can think of is going home to play it!