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

T

 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.

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.

I hadn't played that much in years. I used to, back in the days.


Truth is, I pretty much procrastinated for almost 15 years or so. I had reached a plateau and sort of lost the interest in it. 


Then I figured that there was no point in avoiding the stuff at which I sucked because that's indeed exactly what I should be working on, and I started working on assimilating styles that I'd always discarded because I had no real talent for it. 


I'll never be Yngwie, but, heck, I can at least try and getter better at this type of stuff. And it also pays back as a songwriter because it opens new horizons as to where I can take the melody and such.


This also coincides w/ me switching from strat to Les Paul - with it's bigger neck, it's an opportunity for me to finally work on proper positioning, to gain speed and fluidity. Gain some strength in my pinky. I've also completely changed my picking style, even the way I hold the pick. I used to play w/ the large side of the pick hitting the strings, and my fingers rubbing against the strings. Great for SRV stuff, but not so great w/ other techniques.


So it's really a fresh start, and I'm enjoying it so much that 4-6 hours a day isn't nearly enough. :)

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

Danny Danzi

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.
-Danny

Quite true, Danny.
I tried a set of SIT's on my acoustic. They sounded odd, strangely metallic.  I kept them on the guitar for six months, thinking they might settle down.
They stayed in tune, but I grew to hate the sound of them and finally replaced them with my trusty D'Addario's.
My guitar is much happier now.

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

Rain, quite often in my years of playing, I have found there are reasons for string breakage. I'd never try to sell you on the Boomers other than "hey bro, give 'em a try" but just about always, there is a reason.

Now I change often so my reasons will be different. However, any time you break the same string over and over, there's a reason and it's not always the string's fault. For me, it's always the same two offenders. The rusting at the bridge and then the trem bending right at that spot, or in the saddles themselves, we can form grooves from normal wear that will break some strings where others won't be as affected by this.

Whenever I do break a Boomer, I check where it broke. If it's where the trem bends, I know it was rust. If it breaks a little further back towards the bridge, I know I probably have a little groove in that saddle. I check for both possible problems all the time and have gotten into a common practice of taking a small piece of sandpaper to my saddles about every 6 months to a year. I rub the saddles about 10-12 times just to smooth them out a bit and never have any problems.

So you very well could have had a little groove that was sharp down there. Some strings can handle it where others will just cut and break. I do change all my saddles and rebuild my Floyds every few years so it's something I've become accustomed to. The good thing is...the cost of Boomers are super low now. You can get a 10-pack from Musicians Friend for $36.99 which to me is pretty fair. http://www.musiciansfriend.com/accessories/ghs-boomers-extra-light-electric-guitar-strings-10-pack

If you ever do start breaking any strings though, get a magnifying glass and check the saddle where the string rides for a groove. 9 out of 10 times you'll find one there. Once you smooth it out, you shouldn't break them anymore no matter what brand you use. :)

-Danny

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.

As far as problems with neck tension if guitars are left tuned to pitch, my advice (I've done setup work "commercially") is that if the guitar isn't going to be played, then slacken the string tension a peg-turn or two as it can't do any harm.

If the guitar is to be played rather than collected though, keep it tuned to pitch because if the guitar has been kept strung below pitch for a week or two, when it's pulled up to tune the neck will take a little while to settle into the "proper" relief curve and won't have stable tuning until it's settled. Not a situation you want to be in at a gig.

Being more of a player than collector, I just keep guitars tuned to whatever pitch I play them in, apart from my spare vintage floating- tremolo Strat where I back the tension off to ease the trem springs and pressure on the bridge screws a little.

I've a Tele that's been strung 11-48 for over 25 years with no problems, and an ES-135 that has spent over 15 years tuned to open E, 12-53 or 13-54 strings, again without problems. Mind you, that 135 neck is like half a baseball bat.

As for string breaking, I've acid sweat which destroys the plating, and like Danny find a set does 1-2 gigs or a few weeks regular practice and that's it, unless I want to play on rough black wire.The bridges on my Fenders are so corroded they look like expensive Fender Custom Shop "relic" ones.

The way I avoid string breakages (not one while playing in the last 30 years, though a few while re-stringing) is frequent string changes, and close attention to getting the nut and saddles set up correctly and without sharp edges and with a good string angle behind the bridge. I also lightly lube (nut sauce) the saddles, string holes in the bridge plate, bridge pivot points, nut and string trees on vintage trem-equipped Strats. All these points introduce bends which are stress- risers and stress-risers are prone to fatigue fracture.

As strings get older they become more prone to breaking, and also increasingly difficult to get in tune and keep there - intonation also suffers. Steel under tension fatigues and gradually loses its ability to give a predictable and steady response to a given strain. Eventually, rather than being springy it goes "plastic", stretches easily and keeps going flat, at which point forget any hope of keeping it in tune.

Old strings also suffer from the wraps wearing against the frets which causes irregularities in the winding which also does nothing for pitch stability or intonation. If you look between older strings and the frets you might see "dents" in the string where this has happened.

Old, corroded or dirty strings will also wear frets and fingerboard faster, and the moisture in the air is enough to cause corrosion. Strings are (relatively) cheap and easy to replace - frets aren't.

The strange thing is I often play with fiddlers who seem able to use the same set of plated steel strings for many months or even years. Same with bassists, where wear to the wrap caused by frets (and vice versa) rather than corrosion seems to be the biggest enemy.