String cleaning

LastMantra

Voxman said:

LastMantra said:

I used to clean my guitar/strings loads when I started playing. Don't bother now.
If you over rub them you just take the nickel off them. 

Thats a new one Ive not heard of before! Been playing over 47 years and never rubbed the nickel off my strings yet! 

Well nickel doesn't really dull. 

It's like polishing silver. If you get a lot of "dirt" on the cloth it's actually taking the metal away. 
Certainly wouldn't use brasso or anything abrasive. 

Henrytwang

I just give my strings a quick clean with Fast Fret after playing. I don’t use the little piece of cloth they supply to wipe off the strings  as it leaves fuzzy bits on the fingerboard, I use a bit of cotton cloth instead. Using Fast Fret makes my strings sound and feel great for ages.

p90fool

I have corrosive sweat, conventional strings last a week or so on studio guitars but less than a whole gig on stage guitars. 

Elixir Nanowebs last me four three-hour gigs, and even then I only change them as a precaution against breakages. 

They've transformed my life tbh, I can chuck a just-gigged guitar back in its case and get it out a month later and it's like I just put it down. 

I put my first set of Nanowebs on my Tele for a gig over three years ago and am still occasionally gigging and recording with the same set now. 

Voxman

I met Bert Weedon once in Chappels, Bond Street, when I was 18 - he is the person that taught me about string care.  He said he only ever changed his strings when they broke or once a year.  I couldn't believe it - he must have had incredibly non-acidic/sweaty hands. But he used a lot of right hand picking technique and his left hand was very economic so perhaps not the string wear you get playing Led Zep, AC/DC, GnR etc!

But no matter how clean you keep your strings, if you play regularly, they will lose their tone and ability to stay in tune.  Which is why I'm in awe .... and puzzlement...at folk who don't string change for years!

Sassafras

Voxman said:

I met Bert Weedon once in Chappels, Bond Street, when I was 18 - he is the person that taught me about string care.  He said he only ever changed his strings when they broke or once a year.  I couldn't believe it - he must have had incredibly non-acidic/sweaty hands. But he used a lot of right hand picking technique and his left hand was very economic so perhaps not the string wear you get playing Led Zep, AC/DC, GnR etc!

But no matter how clean you keep your strings, if you play regularly, they will lose their tone and ability to stay in tune.  Which is why I'm in awe .... and puzzlement...at folk who don't string change for years!

Oddly enough, the PRS that hasn't had a string change for at least 8 years is the guitar that stays in tune the best.

Arjailer

I usually change mine once a year, occasionally twice. My current band have a 3 hour practise every week, and we gig maybe 6-10 times a year. I never clean the strings after playing either (though I might start having read this thread). I guess I don't sweat overly much, and I must not have corrosive sweat either. I'm also not a very heavy handed player either - I hardly ever breaks strings when playing.

My strings definitely get acoustically duller over time, but they still sound fine to me when amplified - maybe the high gain stuff we tend to play helps that?

And I've never had tuning stability problems due to old strings either. I can get through a practise or gig with year-old strings without any problems - I still tend to check the tuning after every song, but hardly ever need to adjust anything.

I'm kinda horrified by stories of changing string once or twice a month - I find string changes quite stressful - I used to frequently break high-E's while fitting them - I'm much better now, but still get nervous whenever I do a change. And it must be hella expensive changing strings that frequently for multiple guitars  

skullfunkerry

I seem to have very acidic sweat, I make jewellery go green & corrode if it's not silver or titanium, so I've always assumed that I'd be doing the same to strings. When I was gigging I used to use a swipe of Fast Fret before playing, then give the neck & strings a wipe with a piece of old t-shirt after the set. Seemed to work for me!

Twinfan

Buying in bulk, D'Addarios work out around £4 a set.  I swap mine after around 4 'sessions', either rehearsals or gigs.

I don't bother buying other products to try and extend the life of them, they're cheap enough to swap regularly and I like the tone and feel of fresh strings.  It's a security thing too, I know I'm not going to have a problem in the middle of a gig due to a knackered old string.