How often should I restring my guitar?!
Question: I have a 2006 with original Bullet strings, I am having it set up now and I want to know if I should have opted to get it restrung also. It it 2 years old but I only started to play it 3 months ago.
Answers: I have a 2006 with original Bullet strings, I am having it set up now and I want to know if I should have opted to get it restrung also. It it 2 years old but I only started to play it 3 months ago.
You shouldn't. Unless you play in a band or play gigs you don't need to. Wait until one string breaks, then restring the whole set. Once you start doing gigs you should do it like every month.
Edit: It WILL affect your sustain A LITTLE, but not too much. It will more of just affect your tone. Like I said, unless you are performing for people its not really important.
If you play 15 minutes a day, every 6 months
30 minutes, every four months
an hour, every 2 months
more that an hour, every month
I would go ahead and have it restrung. Even if you're not playing the thing, the strings are still deteriorating because they have been exposed to the air for years.
I restring my guitar when I notice that the oils from my skin start to make the strings (which are covered in tiny brass wires) start to not look bright and shiny. They will look like this even in the areas where you don't put your fingers as much.
When you restring a guitar, you always get a nice bright sound from the new strings, which is really good. A good trick you can do to revitalize an old set of strings, is to carefully take them off the guitar, coil them up, and boil them with a little baking soda for twenty minutes. This cleans some of the garbage and oxidized metal out of them. Make sure they are dry before putting them back on the guitar.
Yeah, I was going to say guitar experts tend to say every month or two, but I only do it when the strings break.
The reason they want you to replaces strings so often is because they tend to lose their crispness by then and its somewhat muddies up the sound of your tone, but if you are a beginner player then your tone isnt even what you are worried about yet, your primary focus is just playing the damn thing, so thats what i would suggest. Just play the damn thing and when a string breaks then you can replace them all if you wish. I know with me, when a string breaks, then I've put a good amount of wear on the whole set so I replace them all (usually) but i try not to replace them otherwise unless i have a gig coming up that I know I want to sound killer for...but usually I'm too lazy for that.
Umm, I restring mine about every six months. Unless it is a folk guitar, then you should change those about every three months. You should be good for a little while, but if you are just starting out three months ago, they get more ware and tear and you should thing about changing them soon.
wow. im surprised they lasted that long. how often SHOULD u? every 2 or 3 months. how often DO most ppl do it? every 6 months about.
I give a crap about my tone - so I restring them when they start to sound like crap. By that, I mean when they don't have that sparkle, when the E string loses the clarity of bass, when they don't sound like they have any life left in them.
I use Elixirs - not the best sounding strings overall, but the best coated strings I've played with. Coated strings last longer, especially if you take care of them - ie, use something like GHS Fast Fret before you play, wash your hands before you play, and wipe your strings off with a cloth afterwards.
I used to restring every other month or so, mostly because when I play live I tend to sweat a bit from jumping around and all that, but once I switched to Elixirs I can go for three or four months before they start to sound dead.
You should always replace the strings the guitar came with. The manufacturer never uses good quality strings.
I've heard you can also wipe your rusty beat up strings down with some vodka as a last resort - they'll clean it up for a night, but that'll about be the end of them.
I've heard about the baking soda/boiling thing, but I've only heard it with bass strings, so it does sound like a valid thing... probably not something you want to do with guitar strings, though, since they're so much cheaper than bass strings.
Saul