When to change the strings

He reckons they looked like somebody had rubbed a hamburger up and down them.
I am trying to envision this Chris so tell me was the hamburger cooked or raw? If it was cooked was it rubbed on there when it was still warm or was it cold like it was laying out on a picnic table overnight or something. Also, was it a plain burger or was it a cheeseburger and did it have other stuff on it? I just want to make sure I understand this and never do it.

I may never get the picture of the burger strings out of my head now :lol:

Ok but DON'T eat them :lol: :lol: :lol:

This thread reminded me I don't change strings often enough. So yet another MF order was just made for new strings. :)

The strings on my LP are about 10 months old and the ones on my acoustic are about 6 months old. I've got some free Elixir's to put on the acoutic though (thanks to Taylor guitars).

The Fender I just got actually came with good strings on it (Fender 250L's I believe) so they'll be OK for a little while.

Anyway, thanks for the reminder! :P

Jason

He reckons they looked like somebody had rubbed a hamburger up and down them.
I am trying to envision this Chris so tell me was the hamburger cooked or raw?
I may never get the picture of the burger strings out of my head now :lol:

I'll see if I can get the recipe for you mate. :wink:

It was a pretty gross image though. :shock: I'm not sure if I should add any more..... but I think the effect was very greasy... with ... um..sort of lumps and flakes of stuff..... :shock: :shock:

Apparently, Drew (the owner) couldn't believe how yukky they looked and actually got out a magnifying glass and inspected the strings....

I think we've already had too much information, but apparently it looked like a primaeval swamp down there. I seem to remember words like "green" and "rotting monsters" being mentioned... :evil:

Apparently he took all the strings off, spent half an hour completely cleaning the guitar, and put a new set of strings on. He may even have considered some kind of exorcism, but he definitely made sure the guy never came within 10 feet of his guitar ever again.

If nothing else, the story did give me a prompt to check that my hands are reasonably clean before I play. 8)

Cheers, Chris

Sounds like the guy might have used a pick on that guitar. A nose pick.

Maybe he just ate and was trying to pick with his teeth :lol: :lol:

i changed mine after 6months because thats when i noticed that they sounded dull. My teachers says he changes his once every 2 weeks. Thats probably because he plays his quite a lot more. But now i have had my current ones on for about 2months and they look quite dirty, so maybe the quality of your strings needs to be considered when deciding on how frequently they need to be changed.

I actually dislike the first bit of time of new strings just as I constantly have to explain to the treble knob on my amp why I set it so low. I change them once a month or something, but for whatever reason the rate of string decay is much higher here then any location known to men.

That probably comes from playing below the sea level.

I hate those first couple days, as well, and tend to keep strings as long as possible. I think an overly broken in set of strings makes for a mellow bluesy sound.
But, besides brightness there are other things to watch for that indicate a bad set of strings. I find that old unwound G's develop an unpleasant twang as they age. It's certainly the most bent string, which must put some wear on it.
More importantly, as strings wear at frets and stretch and corrode and get dirty they vibrate in newly odd ways. This can result in odd overtones and throw individual notes off. This often shows up as sour sounding chords and difficulty tuning. I keep track of this by checking the intonation at the 12th fret quickly when I tune. If the intonation goes off it's time to change the strings.

When I first started I was pretty crazy about changing strings every 3 weeks. Now I just change them when I feel it's time. That's based on grunge on the strings, if the strings feel tacky, and if the strings feel odd.

Do yourself a huge favor. Buy at least a couple of extra full packs of strings as backups. I always travel with two single-strings of the high e, b, and g strings plus two new full sets.

I remember how many times early on I'd break a string and it would be after all the guitar shops were closed since I played mostly at night. Then I couldn't stand to play with only 5 strings on the guitar. It happened three nights like that then I vowed to stock up.

Also, I've had other guitar players I play with who would not have extras strings the so they'd always ask me for my backups.