How to make old guitar strings sound like new.

[PlainSongs]

JB, as I'm sure you know true Renaissance men and women have a double for each instrument - one for SED (science, enhancement, destruction) and one for music. Renaissance dudes below hamburger living standards may have to combine these though.

[Paco Del Stinko]

Yeah, I'm sure this all works, but for how long or how many times? Many years ago, a friend of mine was all excited when he got new life out of his bass strings by boiling them. However, it didn't seem to do much more than clean them up and give them a short second round at life. He didn't practice that for very long, and the couple of times I tried it didn't impress much. Wipe off your guitar strings and neck both before and after use, even underneath the strings between them and the fretboard. Keep it in a case, ideally, and you can certainly prolong the life of your strings. Simple habits.

[Märk]

Here is the inevitable luddite post.

This is very interesting and I appreciate the spirit in which the discussion is occuring.

However, do yourselves a favor: skip a hamburger and buy some new freakin' strings. Give yourself as many opportunities to sound good as you can. This is a pretty easy one, in my opinion.

String players routinely change their strings when they start to sound "dead". I have bought literally dozens of A strings for my 'cello, at $22 a pop, and the only ones I ever regretted were the times I tried to get away with a cheap generic. And as you go down to the D, G, and C strings they get progressively thicker and more expensive. Luckily, you can get decent machine-wound G and C strings, and they'll last a couple years and never break.

A full set of good strings for a 'cello can easily run you $100. Violin, quite a bit less, but still more than $30. But even if I was poor (again) I'd save up for new good strings before I'd try some chemical tomfoolery.

Now back to your regular discussion.

JB

Wow, that was helpful.

[jb]

Nyah nyah.

[Caravan Ray]

Keep fighting the good fight Mark, and save Mother Earth's resources.

When the revolution comes, the prolifigate string-wasting Nazis will be the first ones against the wall.

Peace.

[Albatross]

There are those who swear by soaking bass strings in denatured alcohol. I tried it once - I took a 4-ft PVC pipe with a screw cap on each end, filled it with the alcohol and soaked the strings for a full day.

The result? Eh.

Really, there was little if any discernible difference. I made a small test recordings, playing some random riff (well, I guess after the first time it's no longer random) over a drum loop, once before the soaking and once after:

BEFORE
AFTER

I reckon it's probably not worth doing again.

[Billy's Little Trip]

There are those who swear by soaking bass strings in denatured alcohol. I tried it once - I took a 4-ft PVC pipe with a screw cap on each end, filled it with the alcohol and soaked the strings for a full day.

The result? Eh.

Really, there was little if any discernible difference. I made a small test recordings, playing some random riff (well, I guess after the first time it's no longer random) over a drum loop, once before the soaking and once after:

BEFORE
AFTER

I reckon it's probably not worth doing again.

Well, you can always use the pipe to make a potato gun.

[Caravan Ray]

There are those who swear by soaking bass strings in denatured alcohol.

I've found you get a better result from soaking the bass player in alcohol.