I dug up my mum's 30 year old yamaha g245s, I'm guessing the dull sound means it needs new strings. The thing is, it has 3 steel strings (lower 3) and 3 nylon. I read that steel strings on a nylon guitar is bad and vice versa, and I have no idea which is actually supposed to be on there. Any ideas?

 

As far as I can tell, it's an old classical guitar and should be strung with nylon strings.

 

Are you sure the lower 3 strings are actually steel? These strings look metallic in nylon sets too because they're metal plated and wound (usually with copper).

If you can fit nylons in it, it's probably for nylons. Since nylons are thicker, they wouldn't be able to fit through the slots of a steel guitar.

 

You DEFINITELY should not have a mix of both, since the guitar will sound differently.

That's a bridge for a nylon stringed guitar. A lot of beginners' guitars will have a mix of nylon and steel because it helps to ease the player into the callouses that he/she will inevitably develop. There are special steel strings (round-wound, usually) for nylon bridges. I'd say fit it with whatever you feel you need. There's no right or wrong answer when it comes to strings.

As far as I can tell, it's an old classical guitar and should be strung with nylon strings.

 

Are you sure the lower 3 strings are actually steel? These strings look metallic in nylon sets too because they're metal plated and wound (usually with copper).

 

Turns out they actually are nylon, I didn't think they looked like that. I just got a set of classical nylons and it sounds 50x better than the 20 year old strings it had :thumbup:

whatever you do, dont use steel strings on a classical, my friend ripped his bridge out on his classical because of the increased tension, and my german teacher's neck on her classical is warped all to hell because of the steel strings a student put on there...but a 20 year old guitar? that thing has to sound amazing, if it has aged that long.