New Strings?

Would like some opinions about recording guitars and bass with new strings v. slightly used v. old.

I think 'New' is a little too much. For perfection, I like 3 day old.
 
That said, My guit strings are a few years old. My bass strings are like 10 years old. If there is a problem, I melodyne it.
 
But yea, newish strings are better than oldish strings.

"I always record with day old strings - or at least I start that way!"
 
haha +1

I prefer bass strings broken in. I've flats and tapes on order, Many flat players keep the strings for ages, going for an old school sound. Jamerson never changed his strings, Carol Kaye just brought a new Bass every few years, and they came with flats back then.

A few other points to consider with this:
 
Acids and oils from fingers - These will degrade strings in short order. My fingers are dry to begin with, and I often wash my hands anyway prior to playing. Washing can alleviate some things (or wiping while playing), but some folks have highly acidic sweat. In a gig situation, a cloth dusted or dampened with baking soda/water would keep fingers closer to 7pH even if not dry.
 
Environmental conditions (humidity, air quality, etc.) - My guitars are rarely outside of my den, so they are not exposed to humidity shifts or most air pollutants. If in gig situations, strings would be exposed to more air issues. Not a lot to do about this one other than to wipe down strings or coat them with a protectant.
 
Pickups/guitar type (mentioned above) - The guitar I plek'd a year and a half ago still has the same strings that were on it when I got it back. I check SPAN with it every so often and it still throws all the high end, discrete harmonics it ever did (way up over 10K because the pups are rather hot). Granted, the "overly bright" sound went away in short order, but with the pups I use I do not want that anyway (I need the tone pot around 4 as it is to knock the harmonics down).
 
Quick side note with tuning - When the new nut was plek'd, I realized the approach he used was very similar to how Brian May said he had made his. The slots are actually about 1 mil wider than the string gage, so the only friction at the nut is over the saddle area. As a result, this guitar rarely requires tuning (even with an unused tremolo I have never blocked, but does have heavy springs on). For me, this has been a massive reason not to change strings, since it can simply be picked up and played instantly 99% of the time. The "Damn, that is rather nice" has outweighed any necessity for new strings.

I like new but broken in strings for acoustic recording.  They're usually about where I want them after 30 minutes of playing, give or take.  And that will work for a few days, for me.  
 
Electric dirty guitar, prefer them to be a lot more broken in.  
 
Brand new strings sound cool, but they almost have this "chorus" effect to them, since they sing and respond so much brighter, but that's so limited that you'd have to play your song perfectly to maintain that sound all the way through the song, else you're re-stringing again.  I don't play that perfectly, and it will be hours if not days before I'm done.  
 
But this almost never happens because I don't have the determination to plan and have strings on hand.  Typically, all songs are recorded with old, broken in strings.  sigh...

New strings will obviously have a brighter sound. The older they get, the more dull the sound becomes.
 
If you're recording clean stuff, like jazz or clean twangy country, you would want to use new strings for the brightness that they impart.  Distorted stuff, I don;t think it really matters as much.
 
When I played live.... lots of gigging, I would change the strings every 2 weeks.  Ernie Ball Super Slinky 009 simply because I didn't want a string breakage in the middle of the show.
 
Also, regarding changing strings.... I read in Guitar Player Magazine many years ago that the Nashville session acoustic players used really heavy gauge strings and on a big country star recording session, they would change the strings after 15 to 20 minutes of playing time. They wanted that super bright overtone that the brand new strings gave them and swore that the strings lost those highlights after a few minutes of playing.  All I know is that those sessions have some amazing sounding acoustic guitar tone.
 
Currently, I change strings only when one of them breaks. So they are all well past a year old.... I will change the strings on my Taylor Acoustic when I have need to record something with it.  Besides.... man, who doesn't love the sound of a guitar with brand new barely broken in strings on it?

tlw
I've known jazz electric guitarists of the Joe Pass school who like really worn-in, dull flatwounds. They can help get that very bell-like mostly mids kind of tone, or so they've told me.

 
Yes you are correct. I've known several folks who preferred the mellow sound of the worn out nearly dead strings.
 
Essentially what it comes down to is personal likes.  What sounds best to you for the situation.  There's reason to use new bright strings and reason to use old worn out sounding strings.
 
My biggest concern with old strings is that they are grooved, from the frets, and weakened from the acids in sweat, and thus more likely to break in the middle of something important.
 
I've also noticed that the intonation of the instrument goes off a bit as the strings wear out and get grooves in their undersides. The mass of the string changes as a result.

Guitarhacker
My biggest concern with old strings is that they are grooved, from the frets, and weakened from the acids in sweat, and thus more likely to break in the middle of something important.
 
I've also noticed that the intonation of the instrument goes off a bit as the strings wear out and get grooves in their undersides. The mass of the string changes as a result.

I agree. Though by the time a string has noticable grooves in it, it's usually gone well past "dull" and is fit only for recycling. Strings that worn out won't hold tuning properly either, because they're no longer a uniform diameter and have been stretched for so long the steel core starts to go a bit plastic with fatigue and won't hold a constant tension. At least, that's what seems to happen. The intonation problem isn't just down to lost string mass either, if you measure the pitch of a string in that condition at any given fret it's likely to give a different pitch every time it's played. The string seems to vibrate differently, kind of in sections rather than as a single length.

Badly corroded and worn strings also make excellent files, which is bad news for frets and fingerboard.

tlw, those are all excellent points!