String Change-How Often

Michael Bauer

I just broke a G-string last week…I almost never break a string. Since I play mostly rhythm, perhaps I don't put as much pressure on the strings as a lead player, hence I get less wear. And since I have a body chemistry that seems to do nothing to my strings, and since I have a lot of guitars to rotate, perhaps I am in a perfect situation to get strings to last a really long time.

This whole discussion has been really enlightening, because we tend to generalize based on our own experiences, assuming the same rules apply to all. What this has made evident to me is that guys like Samson aren't necessarily a rarity, and that Samson, Al, and Ryan are contending with a very different set of experiences than I am. I told you once, Al, that just about every time you write something, I learn something new. This is certainly one of those times.

Al Watsky

Totally about learning all the way around !

Jon

A full set every week + incidentals after breaks. I'll usually change them before the most important gig of the week to prevent an ill-timed breakage. Also, I've got the killer acid sweat, so even if if there's not much on in a week, they'll be dead and/or out of tune by the end anyway, not matter how much cleaning of them I do. I think I'm personally sponsoring a worker at the Galli factory, which is better than when I used Argies and sponsored the building and maintenance of an entire new wing.

Jazzaferri

For me its a tuning intonation issue. Once the notches get really noticeable on the backs of the strings, for me that takes about 15 hours of rhythm playing on my DuPont the tuning is really noticable and the intonation up and down the neck drives me crazy. My flat wound electric strings have been on 2 years still work fine no slots.

I use a much lighter touch playing lead on the Dunn and they seem to last twice as long or more.

Reeds last about 2-3 months unless I play a lot of altissimo which really breaks em down.

@Michael Bauer I don't grip hard playing rhythm but as we are usually acoustic and performing 4-6 hours a week acoustically I do whack the poor beastie pretty hard. Galli SS last a little longer than Argies but by the end of a busy week the fret ruts are really noticable on the D and G strings which are usually the ones that go. I wish 8 could buy sets of both instead of single G's

Craig Bumgarner

Last winter a friend was having intonation problems. He know how to adjust the bridge for intonation, but when he sent me a picture of the bridge it was about 30 degrees off square and still not intonating right, so something was wrong. The problem turned out to be heavy corrosion on the under side of the strings.

Turns out most of what we think we know about strings assumes a uniformity of the string mass along its length. Corrosion changes the mass of the string locally and this results in poor intonation. Same thing goes with wear on the underside of the strings at certain frets, broken windings, etc. Bending strings in the extreme may stretch the string in a way that causes it to end up less than uniform.

Honestly though, I'm not hypercritical about minor intonation problems 'cause at 280bpm, who can tell? What makes me change strings is when the low E string goes completely dead, which on Argies seems to be about 3-4 months when played regularly.

Al Watsky

You can't discount the possibility of a bum string as well.
I've put on sets of the Saverez that included strings that weren't going to intonate under any circumstances. New, old, clean ,dirty.
When in doubt change em' out ! :-bd

jazzygtr

I don't like to change unless I have to, and as others here have said I like to keep them until they simply don't stay in tune any more or break.