Guitar Tuning

I recently bought a Korean acoustic hand made guitar. This would be my 6th guitar over the last 50 years. Most of my old guitars were cheap ones made in the Philippines. They tend to split after a few years. Since retiring 6 years ago I had not been playing the guitar very often but has been collecting many guitar music clips and MP3s especially on finger style and slack key. I am now making it a point to play for about a hour a day to improve my finger style technique. It all started when I had to lead in the Christmas hymn singing in a gathering at our Cell Group leader's house 2 months ago.

I have over the months been conditioning my fingers to adapt to the guitar strings and starting with 10 gauge for the 1st string and will eventually go to 12 gauge string. I understand that the bridge needs to be changed or adjusted for a heavier gauge.

The guitar comes with an electric pick-up and a built-in digital tuner. When I reduce the tuning by slacking the strings to a lower pitch from concert, I have difficulty getting any accuracy in the digital readout and for the string to stay in tune for long. The higher the tension the easier to ensure the string stays in tune. Therefore it is obvious that when we use a higher gauge, the tuning will tend to stay more accurate for a longer time. That is why most electric guitars with very low gauge strings need to be re-tuned every now and then. Well eventually I will go above 12 gauge and the tone will sound richer and louder. However the fingers hurt - ouch.