Strings

[ericcoleman]

I was reminded of this by a friends post.

Most of you have seen me play. I play hard. I really do.

I almost never break strings. The only time in recent memory where I have has been when I took someone's advice and put Elixer's on my guitar. I broke one in about an hour.

So ... guitar players ... how often do you break strings ???

Comments

[chirosinger.livejournal.com]

Ever? Not to my recollection. Hey maybe someday I'll get really wild and crazy and pick at the strings hard enough to break one. No really, maybe someday I will. Yup. You just wait and see!

[gundo.livejournal.com]

Depends...if it's a new set of strings on my 12-strings and the high-G is .009 or thicker, it will probably break. Especially if I'm using heavy picks (I like Fender 346 Medium and Heavy picks for the most part.)

I tend to put .008s on as soon as the high-G breaks, and keep a stash of them just for that occasion. I also make a point of playing with thin picks when I play outdoors, since heavy picks and temperature changes play havoc on strings.

String breaking

[markiv1111.livejournal.com]

This varies from one guitar to the next. Back when I was playing steel stringed guitars a lot (my Guild D-35 dreadnought acoustic)I broke just an amazing amount, seven strings in one evening once at a Minicon. And in the really early days with my South American classic (which I have now had for 48 years, and I am now reminiscing about 44 to 46 years ago) I almost never changed the strings, especially since there wasn't anyplace in my home town to get them, so every six months or so I'd break one just because it was so old and worn that it had to break. On my electric guitars, though, it's almost never; four or five during my entire life. I did break one on an electric bass once, and now I always take two basses with me to each gig.

Nate

[freeimprov.livejournal.com]

Hardly ever. Of course, I do have a light touch. But I found my string breakage, when I did have it, was usually due to sharp edges on tuners. I used to break strings on the Yamaha. A luthier fixed it and it hasn't broken a string since.

fwiw, I play mostly John Pearse 80/20 lights on acoustics, and GHS Nickel Rockers on electrics.

strings...

[noise626.livejournal.com]

I actually have never broke a string during a performance. In practice, yes, but live, no. Now excuse me whilst I knock on all kinds of wood :0

I don't break strings while playing

[filker0.livejournal.com]

Although I've broken strings while tuning (12 string, turning the wrong knob on the high G), I've never broken a string whilst playing. Not one in 34 years. I did once have a bridge break while I was playing, but the strings didn't break.

[tigertoy.livejournal.com]

I've broken a string while playing exactly once. I usually play fairly gently; even when I'm flatpick strumming I use a very light pick. But I do have a couple of pieces that I get pretty energetic on, and at any given time my strings are probably so old they're about to break just from being used up.

YMMV, but the way my strumming works, I think I would break more strings strumming a 6 energetically than I do on the 12. My theory is that strings break not just from strumming hard, but from strumming imprecisely -- dig a little too hard into the strings and you stress them way more than you mean to, and sometimes enough to go *poing*. I find that playing the 12 actually keeps me more precise.