Never thought of retightening the strings periodically Robert. That makes perfect sense to keep the neck tension in order to keep things from bending. I'm glad I didn't try to loosen the strings.

 It is still amazing to me how that piece of wire can be stretched to that tension and not break right away...really is a science in metalurgy when looking at the physics of it.

 I appreciate the other comments. I hang my guitars on an inside wall and my house usually has a good balance in humidity so I'm not thinking that humidity plays any big role. My only acoustic guitar is in a case. My electrics hang on the wall and they do get dusty after awhile.

 I tried elixir coated strings on my acoustic and wasn't impressed. The larger gauges seem to work better for me on my electrics because I find myself not always using a pick. 

 Those cobalts look like something I am going to need to try for sure.

  I just took D'addarrios off with my most recent change. I liked them ok but guess I wanted to try something different. I seem to gravitate towards the Ernie Balls. I like the hybrid mix and maybe some of it was that bright green package that caught my attention ;) They are good strings.

have seen pieces of flesh all over them

LOL........REALLY.....?






Dude.....

I totally get what you mean. 

I remember a biology class in high school - we were studying blood groups and were expected to provide samples by pricking out fingertips. Being right-handed, I obviously tried to collect the sample from my left hand - but I could never get through the skin. 


After over a month off, I'm back to playing/recording/practicing 4 to 6 hours a night. You should see the tip of my fingers. Biting a blister is the best description. The strange thing is it doesn't really hurt though... 

+1 on leaving guitars tuned to pitch. I would think leaving a guitar neck with no tension on it would do far more damage than a tuned set up.

As to changing. I tend to change strings on my hanging guitars about once very six months but I probably play them all fairly equally (but not much). My main two gigging guitars get changed anywhere between once a month to the once every six months, depending on how busy they've been.

I only have one bass and I change its strings regularly. Having said that the interval is once every 25 years and I've only had it about 12, so it's roughly halfway through its regular string change cycle. I'd like to thank bitflipper for pointing out in a thread about a year ago that bass strings could be changed, hence my new resolve to do it regularly.

MIke,
Thanks for that!
10-54's on the way...

T

DeeringAmps


Bob is right, keep the guitar tuned to pitch; even tension on the neck.
Chuck is right also, 10-52 all the way; gotta love a fat bottomed girl!
How can you break a .052 string???

T

Bud, I have no clue but I do it all the time!  I play hard/alternative/punk rock and generally play with a heavy pick 1.0mm  (I like the "Cool" brand picks with the grip tape on em!) I attack too damn hard on stage, I jump around like I am still 17 or something trying to put on the best show I can for our fans.  I wear the fingernail on my right index finger down to a nub and have actually ripped the whole nail off once.  I swear I play with my nail more than the pick sometimes.
  
  I am also the only person who I have ever seen or heard of to break bass strings (again low E & A) while playing, and when I play bass I play with my fingers... no picks!  


I call it hyper-dynamic.  I get too into the show and when the peak of a song hits I am bouncing off the walls! LOL    It is for this reason that I have always:
a) hated floyd rose/kayler systems... when you break a string you are too far out of tune to finish the song.
b) hated auditioning a guitarist, bassist, or drummer who plays too light with no confidence or attack!   when the song is soft fine, when it's in your face I beat the Sh#t out of my instruments! haha

Starise


 You guys practice for 4-6 hours a day?  Man about the only thing I do for that long is sleep. I'll bet you have some fine chops though.

 I have a few wussy callouses.....maybe one day I'll loose some flesh lol.

 When it comes to guitar strings I like to try different things, I'll give those GHS 9-42 a try Danny. Not sure I'm ready for the BB King set yet.Looks interesting though.

Nah unfortunately AND fortunately, I don't practice anymore. I know I need to practice, but don't have the time nor the desire to be honest. One day I just woke up and said "ok, you got enough weapons in the arsenal to write on the thing...why did you get into playing guitar... to try and be a virtuoso or to write?" Of course it was always writing for me but I sort of got thrown off course for a bit due to the 80's shred temptation bug that hit quite a few of us in my time. LOL!
 
Hahaha nah, the wussy callouses are good too! If you can do string bends without hurting, you have enough callouses! :) Bends are what really jacks up your fingers....and to bend correctly and with emotion, super model hands/fingers ain't gonna cut it. Hahaha!
 
Yeah I too went through the whole string trial thing. I went to 3 different music stores and tried every set of strings I could buy. I have all the empty packs tacked up on my walls so I know which I tried. And it looks kinda cool. :) The one thing about trying strings that I hate...you just about always have to re-intonate for that brand of strings. Even if you set your guitar up for 9-42 for one brand, those same gauges with another brand will force you to make a few little changes. Not as drastic as moving to 10's, but you'll notice a few things that will need to be tweaked.
 
I really like those Boomers though Starise. I know they aren't for everyone, but of all the strings I've tried, they just sort of made me feel as one with my guitar. I wish they lasted a little longer, but then again that depends on how aggressive you are as a player as well as if you wash your hands before you play and wipe your strings down after.
 
Just wiping them down isn't enough...you have to grip them between your thumb and middle finger and with a cloth, apply some pressure with the tips of your nails to sort of scrape them a little in case you do have some funk on them. I normally don't see anything unless I fail to wipe them down a few times in that manner. As soon as I sweat or play gigs in the summer time, they are toast in 1-2 shows though depending on just how much I sweat.
 
A lot of my issues stem from resting my hand and palm muting while sweating so bad, it looks like a faucet. Where I rest my hand is right at the bridge on my trem assembly. When they rust there and then I use my trem bar, that's where they snap. It's always the same place for me. If I don't sweat, they don't get that rust thing going on and they last about a week. But yeah, continue to try them and see what works for you.
 
Sometimes having something last longer doesn't mean you get a good tone. For example, I used to use those SLP strings. SLP=Super Long Play. They lasted long but the tone wasn't really that good. Or Super Slinky.....or SIT=Stay In Tune strings....lasted long and felt good, but the tone was a bit dark and really didn't fit my style. Elixer's...same thing...last a long time, feel really nice, cost way too much for a set of strings...but the tone did nothing for me. I do like them on acoustic though! It's just one of those things you'll need to experiment with and try out. Best of luck in whatever you come up with. Just try to be careful putting any type of fluid on your strings like fast fret or finger ease etc. I like that stuff on my neck to make it fast, but nothing on my strings. :)
 
-Danny

I'll have to give those GHS another try. I loved the sound and feel more than any other strings I've tried but I kept breaking e strings al the time. And since I don't usually change one string but the whole thing, it cost me - so I moved on to Slinkies - which solved the problem and took the bridge out of the equation. 

I can't remember the last time I broke a slinky, seriously. And I bend like a maniac, every chance I get. 

Maybe my Boomers curse has been lifted... :P

That was my first thought - that there was probably a minuscule dent in the saddle. However, being a lazy guy and not particularly inclined to mess up w/ my guitars' hardware, and seeing that the problem vanished by simply using different strings, I opted for the easy solution.

 Interesting stuff tlw.... interesting stuff. I can tell you are a mechanic of sorts from the way you approach the mechanics of a guitar.

 One thing I never considered was that bad strings can prematurely wear frets. From the time a guitar is built and strung there are opposing forces at work. The strings work against the neck and the neck works against the strings. I knew a neck would try to fight back if the strings were loosened but I wasn't sure if it was a serious enough thing to actually damage the neck long term. I like your idea to loosen the strings only a small amount. From what I can tell the strings always loose the battle in the end, unless a person winds  heavy strings on a guitar and overwinds them on a guitar with a tight truss rod..then maybe the neck will fail.

 So this battle of opposing forces eventually ruins the strings no matter if played or not...guess I'd better get to playing and get my moneys worth then;)

A mechanic of sorts? I suppose so - thinking about it I know quite a few musicians who are happy handling a spanner or soldering iron.

As far as setting up guitars is concerned, there's no mystery or black arts to it really. Just a process of measuring and adjusting, then playing, then repeating as necessary until happy enough. Do it often enough and it becomes second nature.

Banjo setups, on the other hand, where everything moves relative to everything else and adjusting the rods or skin alters the action and vice- versa are entirely a matter of luck. Though I'm told sacrificing a goat sometimes helps :-).

Darn, there goes my plan to beat the finger push ups world record. ;)

Thanks Danny.

One of the things I'm trying to address - hopefully before it actually hits me: I've had joint issues as far as I can remember - literally as a kid already, starting w/ my knees. Doctors used to say I grew up too fast. Anyway, the one solution I've found to work, besides supplements like glucosamine, is to strengthen the muscles. 

My hands have pretty much been spared so far - especially the left one, and I always assumed that the constant stretching and "exercising" inherent to playing guitar was to thank for that. But I'm not getting younger, and anything I can do to keep those hands in shape...

The other fun part is that I've also suffered from a mild condition called "essential tremors" (I think) since I was a kid. While it's pretty mild - never prevented me from threading a needle or whatever - it bugs me if I have to stretch out of the comfort zone - for example, playing w/ the thumb in the back of the neck, and stretching my wrist and hand. 

I have BIG hands, which I think make certain positions - like the "classical" position - even less comfortable. That's what I used to tell my classical guitar teacher when she'd do barre chord and have her entire finger resting against the strings while I only used 2/3 of my index and had to push that wrist way out there and my palm all curved out just to keep the thumb in its place. 

Anyway, working out w/ dumbells to strengthen my wrist always seemed to help, and I wish I could do the same for my pinky and the whole outer side of my hand.

So I'm not really counting on that thing to turn me into a fretboard whiz - that's what the studying and practicing is for, addressing the mechanics - but more to strengthen my hands and keep them healthy for as long as I possibly can. 

Cactus Music


Excellent post TLW. 
When I had my music shop I changed a lot of strings. I had a flat rate  that included the pack of strings of $20 for 6 and $30 for 12 and , well,  bass players never change strings....I would also include a basic intonation and saddle adjustment. 

Best brands were GHS and D'addario. According to a sales rep, the majority of brands are all made with the same machine using the same base materials. 

New strings don't really stretch, The slack comes from improper seating at the saddle/bridge and the tuning machines. If installed properly they will stay in tune after a quick pre tensioning. 

If your breaking the same string all the time pay attention to exactly where it is breaking and look for an issue there. 

Where I grew up, a new set of strings was prohibitively "expensive" (for me anyway), like $11 or $12. I'm talking plain old regular strings, back in the mid-eighties. There weren't much choices, besides D'Addario or Gibson. 


An old woman had that weird little shop where they had a couple of guitars for sale, among all the lamps and antiques and weird decoration stuff, and she used to sell individual strings, which was a blessing for me, because I just couldn't afford to replace the whole set at once every time I broke a string. Don't know how many times I went there to buy e strings. Gibsons, that's what she had.


Eventually, we got access to better guitars and more strings choices, and I had the money to afford both. But I could never play D'Addario again. In my mind they're associated w/ my first crappy electric guitar, on which I had to keep strings for months, replacing the broken one when I could, other times playing w/ only 5 strings for a while. Man, I ruined my fingers and developed tons of bad habits on that thing! If my kids ever want to play and instrument, I'll make sure they cut their teeth on something decent.


I guess that's also one of the reasons why I now change strings so often. Plus, they're just so much more affordable here and now. :)