guitar question - steel strings on a spanish?

[shirt]

looking to buy an acoustic in the next couple of days and am interested in a spanish guitar as they have a wider fingerboard which may help my spam hands.

nylon strings won't be any good though as i want to play slide on it. can you fit steel strings or will the tension cause too much bow in the neck?

do spanish guitars have truss rods? looking at older ones on fleabay so obviously the descriptions are pants.

[Dai Capp]

Not sure on how much you want to chuck at this, but some of the acoustic jazzers have wide necks and fingerboards. There's a few pretty decent Selmer and Macaferri copies around these days.

Unfortunately they are commonly known a gypsy jazz guitars but if you can get past the name shame they may be worth a look...

Otherwise I wouldn't fancy stringing a Spanish with steel strings as I'm not sure the guitar would take it long term - there'll be some tech types along though to tell you for sure soon...

Cheers

DC

[levron73]

My gut feeling is that they won't fit or work. The nylon strings have different "ends" and thus go through and are tied. Steel stings have the "ball" at the end so may well damage the bridge

[Size Nine Elm]

You could damage the bridge, neck and tuning/machine heads - if they're designed for nylon strings the steel could cut into them, and also requires more tension on the neck.

Just buy a cheaper steel-stringed guitar - if its for slide, the quality is less important.

[shirt]

cheers chaps. didn't think so, but worth checking.

i'm looking at cheap ones, the unloved guitars of the ebay world - kay, eko, stella and the like. used to have a knackered framus archtop for this that was £30 and sounded amazing, but some pikey stole it

[paulmurr]

It wont work I'm afraid, it'll just knacker your guitar.

[raharley]

Size Nine Elm said:

You could damage the bridge, neck and tuning/machine heads - if they're designed for nylon strings the steel could cut into them, and also requires more tension on the neck.

Just buy a cheaper steel-stringed guitar - if its for slide, the quality is less important.

Yep - this is true. You should never put nylons on a steel string guitar, although vice versa would be worse.

Why do you want them to play slide guitar anyway? Nylons are usually for classical and fingerstyle. I haven't played a steel string in quite a long time and I don't think I could ever go back now - even if I wanted to. Steel strings kill your fingers and the necks are so small and awkward compared.

[shirt]

because i want to fret behind the slide and also a little fingerstyle.

steel strings aren't a problem, had 16's on the gretsch and got used to that. i don't go much for fret wking and bending so its not that bad on the fingers.

[SaliMali]

The neck will snap before the strings get up to tune as spanish/classical guitars don't have truss rods.