Learn How To Play Guitar & Guitar Accessories

Question: Can i use acoustic guitar strings on a 5-string banjo?

(Posted by: mistikalvalkrie on 2010-07-29 21:21:24)

My friend needs my hubby and I to store banjo for her that she found at a yard sale, since are both musicians and both play stringed instruments and are good at fixing said instruments, we volunteered to try and fix it up a little because it was kind of old and dirty and needed new strings, but neither of us know anything about banjos. So my question is, since we have spare acoustic 6- string guitar strings (and electric) would those work or would we have to buy separate strings for the banjo? And is there anything else we would need to know about replacing banjo strings?

Posted by: Norm Jones on 2010-07-30, 01:14:04

Hello there, The sizes (diameter) will not match up. A guitar uses graduated strings. The low E is the thickest string and each string does down in diameter. That is not the case with the banjo. Note the string gauges in the set of banjo strings 011 011 015 022W 011 (only one wound string) elderly.com/ accessories/ cats/ STBJ.html You should also know what pitch to tune each string ezfolk.com/ banjo/ Tutorials/ G_Tuning/ g_tuning.html Later,