What types of Strings and Picks do I use?

A good carpenter never blames his tools

When I was a kid, I really didn't have a clue about which guitar strings to buy for my guitars or which picks to use. My first electric guitar was a copy - Fender Telecaster. I do remember thinking that if I had a Fender guitar, I should probably use Fender strings. That was fine. Fender makes great strings. The problem I had was, I broke way too many strings. I was buying the thinnest sets of strings for electric guitars.

Guitar strings are rated in fractional millimeters. They are cataloged by size in reference to the first (E) string. If you like thinner strings, you might buy a set of .09's or .10's for your electric guitar. I have seen strings as thin as .08mm's. Back then, I would buy sets of .09mm's. The rest of the strings (2-6) would be larger in size than the first string, so the numbers would increase accordingly. As a teenager, I honestly had no idea that string sizes even mattered.

It wasn't until I started playing with other guitar players, that I began to learn and unders…