Acoustic Day-to-Day Resource
http://www.guitartips.addr.com

Question:
Can you use electric strings on a steel string acoustic guitar? If not, why not?
Murray

Answer:
You can but the sound would not be right. Acoustic strings are bronze wound which have a very different tone than electric guitar strings which are nickel wound.

You will rarely run across the case where some acoustic guitarist prefers electric guitar strings. If the acoustic guitar has a magnetic pick up across the sound hole, you'll need nickel or copper plated strings to make the pick up work properly. I actually knew a guy who preferred flat wound electric guitar strings on his acoustic guitar because he couldn't stand to hear the squeaky sound of his fingers sliding on acoustic strings. Go figure!

Gman ( o )==#