To non-musicians I’m sure that steel-string and nylon-string guitars probably look almost indistinguishable – they’re just acoustic guitars. However, anyone who has listened to both side-by-side will immediately recognise that, tonally, they’re miles apart.
Their timbre – tonal quality or colour – is so different that each is now strongly associated with specific genres of music. So much so that bringing a nylon-string guitar to a rock performance or a steel-strung dreadnought to a classical performance is akin to bringing a knife to a gunfight.
