Can someone explain the acoustic guitar string gauges and measurements?
The gauge of the string refers to its diameter (its thickness). The thicker the string the better (and usually louder) the sound but the harder the guitar is to play as a thicker string needs to be tighter to reach a given pitch. This makes it harder to press the string down or to “bend” it. Therefore, choosing a string gauge is a bit of a compromise. To complicate things, what one manufacturer calls “light” might be considered by another manufacturer to be “extra light” or “medium”. Each set of strings will tell you the actual thickness of each string. This is measured in hundredths of an inch, so a string described as .10, will be ten hundredths of an inch in diameter, a .11 will be 11 hundredths of an inch in diameter and so on. It all comes down to taste and technique, but personally I would avoid “extra light” and “heavy” for acoustic guitar. I’d go for “light” or “medium”. This would mean that the first string (the high E) would be .11 or .12 gauge.
