Can you put nylon strings on a steel string acoustic guitar?

Question:nylon sounds alot better but i want to keep the acoustic i have now. Is it proper to put nylon on an acoustic guitar meant for steel strings?

Best Answer - Chosen by Asker: nylon sounds alot better but i want to keep the acoustic i have now. Is it proper to put nylon on an acoustic guitar meant for steel strings?

As others have said, it is not recommended because the steel-string neck is meant to handle the tension of steel strings, and nylon strings have much less tension. It won't do any immediate damage, especially if you loosen your truss rod a full turn or two to compensate. But if you keep the nylon strings on for too long your neck may twist or warp irreversibly.

I don't recommend doing it, but if you want to try it anyway, get nylon strings with ball ends (Martin makes Darco strings with ball ends, and there are also Black Diamond strings with ball ends).

Putting nylon strings on a steel-string guitar is not nearly as bad as putting steel strings on a nylon-string guitar -- whatever you do, don't do that!

It won't really work. Nylon strings are designed to be tied around tuning posts like on classical guitars. steel string acoustics have different tuning pegs. Also, the truss rod on guitars are adjusted with steel string tension in mind. Nylons exert way less tension and your guitar neck might start to warp if you managed to get them on there.

possible with truss rod adjustment but not recommended as string tension is different.

How would you attach string end to bridge plate? most steel strings end in a ball to be held by bridge pins. I don't recall nylons that do.

You can find a nylon string guitar pretty cheap.

You can put it but expect the neck to warp considerably. By putting nylons, you are removing about 2 pounds of tension on the neck.

It will play but for how long.