Hummingbird New Vintage String Guage

[Bozz]

I recently purchased a Hummingbird New Vintage. I restrung it with D'Addario EJ16 Lights (PB 12-53), which sound and feel great. I was just looking at the Gibson specs for this guitar and noticed the recommended strings are "11-52 Gibson Light Gauge". 11-52's are Ultra Light. Every other Hummingbird iteration I've looked at recommends 12's. And I've never heard of a guitar of this size needing 11's.

 

Here is a link to the the NV specs. http://www.gibson.com/Products/Acoustic-Instruments/Square-Shoulder/Gibson-Acoustic/Hummingbird-New-Vintage/Specs.aspx

 

I know Gibson is famous for publishing conflicting and confused specs. I would normally not pay much attention to this, but the light build of this guitar (almost a full pound lighter than a Standard Hummingbird) makes me wonder if the 11's are actually what I should be using. I'm not really interested in speeding up the window on neck resets. Nor would like to see an implosion anytime soon.

 

I'd call Gibson customer service, but several different people in both Tennessee and Montana couldn't even find the specs on this guitar for me, supposedly because it was a limited run for Wildwood. I'm thinking the knowledge and experience here is probably more useful.

[JuanCarlosVejar]

The NV birds have scalloped bracing and light gibson strings should do the trick for you.

 

 

 

 

 

 

JC

[littlejohnny]

As far as I know, the NV models are the same as the True Vintage birds aside from the finish. My TV Bird came with 12s and takes them just fine.

[E-minor7]

The TV's and NV's have lighter back-braces than the Std. - I believe the top ditto are identical.

 

But don't worry > fly 12's

[Bozz]

Thanks all for your input. It's unanimous. The 12's are sticking around.

[craigkim]

I am a beginning player and only have 2 acoustics, a 2016 Hummingbird Vintage and a Martin Custom D. I think my bird is pretty similar to yours. I played around with strings a LOT on them and found that the HB changed dramatically with different strings compared to the Martin. The Martin didn't really seem to be "string sensitive", but the bird changed much moreso for whatever reason. I tried the Gibson Lights (came with the guitar), TI spectrum series in light 12-54, Elixir nanoweb PB in 12-53 and 11-52, martins PB lifespan coated in light, and D'addario PB in 12-53 and 11-52, plus a few others. I ended up settling on the D'Addario in 11-52 as sounding the best to me.

 

I didn't take notes, but I was looking for increased playability, while not sacrificing sound too much. The 80/20 custom light offerings I tried were too chimey and bright, but the other light options were not as good as the Gibson lights. I threw on the PB lights and they were warmer and sounded good, so I tried the custom light in PB and they brightened it up nicely. I think of it like the reduced gauge is balanced by the warmth of the PB material. I change them more often, but they are pretty cheap.

[Bozz]

I am a beginning player and only have 2 acoustics, a 2016 Hummingbird Vintage and a Martin Custom D. I think my bird is pretty similar to yours. I played around with strings a LOT on them and found that the HB changed dramatically with different strings compared to the Martin. The Martin didn't really seem to be "string sensitive", but the bird changed much moreso for whatever reason. I tried the Gibson Lights (came with the guitar), TI spectrum series in light 12-54, Elixir nanoweb PB in 12-53 and 11-52, martins PB lifespan coated in light, and D'addario PB in 12-53 and 11-52, plus a few others. I ended up settling on the D'Addario in 11-52 as sounding the best to me.

 

I didn't take notes, but I was looking for increased playability, while not sacrificing sound too much. The 80/20 custom light offerings I tried were too chimey and bright, but the other light options were not as good as the Gibson lights. I threw on the PB lights and they were warmer and sounded good, so I tried the custom light in PB and they brightened it up nicely. I think of it like the reduced gauge is balanced by the warmth of the PB material. I change them more often, but they are pretty cheap.

 

Thanks for sharing the results of your string search. I'll probably stick with 12's, but I agree that the D'Addario PB's sound pretty nice from top to bottom.