Preparing your guitar

The first thing to do is to prepare your guitar to play well. You need to pick a set of strings, get your guitar set up, and choose a pick.

Ideally you would get a professional to set up your guitar so the neck is near flat and the action is nice and low, but there are guides around on the internet for setting up your guitar yourself if you would prefer. I would be very careful touching the truss rod, as you can damage your guitar permanently, so getting a professional to do this would be a wise choice.

What I am mainly concerned with which gives an easy, instant improvement to the playability of your guitar is string and pick choice. Many players use poor quality strings with the wrong gauges and poor quality picks unsuited to their style of playing.

The vast majority of strings are designed for standard E tuning, and even in this tuning the low E string is loose. What you want is all the strings roughly the same tension, perhaps with the lighter strings at a lower tension so they are easier to bend. With the standard .009-.042 set in Drop D tuning, the bottom string will be very loose, in Drop C (which I play in) all the strings will be loose and the bottom even looser. D'addario have a chart of string tensions for different gauges and notes: Gauge guide This is a great guideline for choosing string gauges with even tensions in your tuning. You can also order individual strings from them so you can build your own set. I use Tite-Fit JH-10 by DR for Drop C, as I find I like the tension and they are all roughly the same tension in Drop C, and I find DR strings good to play and they keep their brightness and tone for a long time. The gauges are: 10 14 18 32 44 56 which is a good guideline for Drop C, for Drop D you may want slightly thinner strings. It is definitely worth getting quality strings with the right gauge, it makes it massively easier to play.

Choose a quality pick that suits your playing style. If you are playing in drop tuning chances are you are going to be shredding, in which case a thick sharp pick is your best bet. Dunlop make the vast majority of good picks out there, you can't really go wrong with them. I use a black Dunlop Jazz-III which is fairly small, sharp, and thick, and the beveled edges give a great tone. Black Jazz-IIIs are stiffer than red ones. Another good choice is Dunlop Ultex Sharps. If you are more into strumming you might prefer a thinner pick, and if you don't play fast you might not want a sharp tip.


I hope these tips help you to set your guitar up how you want it, and make it easier to play. With quality strings and picks your tone should improve too.