The larger the diameter of the string, which is often called “music wire”, is actually spring steel. The increase in diameter moves more of the magnet field through the coil thus producing a stronger signal to the amplifier.

I remember a band in Southern, New Jersey during the mid sixties called the “Sterling Brother” and one of their guitarist named Mark Hutchingson played a three pickup Les Paul Custom (Later called the Gibson SG Custom). He used 3 “A” Tenor banjo strings for the E, B, and G strings. He had such a unique sound with such thin strings. The other guitarist in the band was a great player named Joe Seddon and both lived in the Pitman area of South Jersey. I used to watch them play all kinds of instrumentals from The Ventures especially “Hernando’s Hidaway” and their own version of “Canadian Sunset”. They were a big influences on me and I used to go from club to club to watch them play.

There were lots of influences while living in South Jersey especially when Roy Buchanan taught me to us an “A” tenor banjo string for my high E. Experiment with your gauge of strings and whose to say you can’t use all 6 plain strings from E to E! I guarantee you will come up with some unique sounds.