Best nylon guitar strings 2024: top picks from D'Addario, La Bella, Ernie Ball and more

If you’re looking to breathe some life into a classical or Flamenco guitar, then there’s no better or easier way than fitting it with a set of the best nylon guitar strings. 

Whether you’ve inherited an old classical and you fancy learning guitar yourself, or you’re a seasoned player looking to perform some regular maintenance, the best nylon guitar strings will improve the instrument’s sound, feel, tuning and intonation. 

Nylon guitar strings have come a long way since their inception. Many classical and Flamenco guitars were actually strung with catgut strings, among other natural materials, until around World War II. Now though, they’re made from nylon and other similar synthetic materials. 

There are loads of different ones on offer, and will suit different guitarists and playing styles. We’ve picked out what we reckon are the best nylon guitar strings, covering a range of features and budgets. 

Product guide and reviews

Buying advice

Tension

With all of the best nylon guitar strings, you’ll see them labeled as either soft/low, medium/normal or hard/high/strong tension. This is sort of similar to the gauges that you’d see on electric and steel acoustic strings in that it affects how they feel under the fingers and the sound you get. 

Nylon strings are naturally softer than steel strings, but soft tension are the most easy-going on your fingers. The reduced tension means you don’t have to press down quite as hard, which can help those just starting out. You’ll usually get a super mellow tone with a relatively slow attack to the notes. 

Conversely, hard tension nylon strings provide a brighter and snappier tone, with a quicker attack – they’re slightly louder too. There’s more tension, so slightly more pressure is required to press the string down properly. The higher tension also means they’re well suited to hybrid guitars that feature a truss rod running through the neck. Players who use a pick might also like the resistance that the higher tension provides. 

As you’d expect, medium tension strings sit somewhere in the middle making them a good starting point if you don’t know which way to go! 

Ball end

When you take them out of their packet, most nylon strings don’t have anything at either end. When restringing, you feed the string through the hole and then make a loop and tie it underneath itself. Some find this to be quite fiddly and tricky, but after a bit of practice, it’s easy enough (there are plenty of tutorial videos out there showing you what to do).

Some manufactures do offer ball ends on their nylon strings. This makes installing the strings a lot easier – all you need to do is feed the string through the bridge and the ball end will hold it in place. 

Materials

You might expect nylon strings to be made of, well, nylon – and you’d be sort of right. The thinnest three strings are usually made from a single nylon filament. Sometimes, you might see carbon strings advertised – the treble strings here are made from fluorocarbon and sound brighter and puncher. 

The bass strings (the three thicker ones) feature a core, wrapped by windings – not unlike electric and steel acoustic strings. With nylon strings, the core is usually a multifilament nylon or composite material, and the windings are made from copper – often coated in silver or bronze.

Silver is a touch warmer sounding, and 80/20 bronze tends to be brighter and snappier, with more sustain. Sometimes, you might have a naturally dark or bright sounding instrument, so choosing your strings to complement or counterbalance this can help you nail your tone.

Can I use steel strings on a classical or Flamenco guitar?

Whilst you will be able to fit steel strings to your classical or Flamenco guitar, they are not designed for it, and you could end up damaging your guitar. Steel strings apply more tension to the neck, and, given that most nylon-strung guitars aren’t fitted with a truss rod to strengthen them, that tension could then warp the neck and, over time, make it unplayable. 

How we choose

Here at Guitar World, we are experts in our field, with many years of playing and product testing between us. We live and breathe everything guitar and bass related, and we draw on this knowledge and experience of using products in live, recording and rehearsal scenarios when selecting the products for our guides.

When choosing what we believe to be the best nylon guitar strings available right now, we combine our hands-on experience, user reviews and testimonies and engage in lengthy discussions with our editorial colleagues to reach a consensus about the top products in any given category.

First and foremost, we are guitarists, and we want other players to find the right product for them. So we take into careful consideration everything from budget to feature set, ease of use and durability to come up with a list of what we can safely say are the best nylon guitar string on the market right now.

Read more about our rating system, how we choose the gear we feature, and exactly how we test each product.

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