I've always had the problem with my strings, after a week or two, they just go dead. The tone will have some major distortions in the mid range, it'll start sounding like a fart. The highs just become more quiet as the strings get old. The lows, well even they become quieter as the strings age, not as fast as the high range of the sound. and distort as well.. I've messed around with my EQ's a lot as the age of the strings increases, to get a similar sound. The other thing I noticed, when the strings get old, they make your timing become more difficult. You strike the string, and they feel like they take just a hair longer to reset back to where you struck the string the previous time. I've had many attempts to try to prolong the life of my strings. I tried boiling the wound strings. It sort of works but not really. The tricks I've learned to get a few extra days out of the strings is: 1. Wash your fucking hands before even touching the guitar. That'll get rid of some of dirt and oil on your hands. Not to mention it's good hygiene. 2. Wipe down the strings before and after you play. That'll get some of the dirt and oil on the strings. And yes if they're sitting around they are still accumulating dirt. 3. Use some sort of cleaner on the guitar when you change strings. Especially get the fretboard clean. I use regular pledge, works just as good if not better than those "guitar cleaners" they sell at the music shops and it costs less too. 4. Get thicker gauge strings. It'll take you like maybe a few weeks for your hands to get strong enough to handle the heavier gauges, and they make a difference. And I read that somebody is using vinegar to clean their strings. I don't think that's such a great idea, it's a strong acid and I think it'd be possible for that to damage the guitar. On some cheap POS Washburn dreadnought I had, I was too cheap to change the strings regularly for such a crap guitar. I came up with the idea to use some brass polish for the bronze strings. It really did work, the strings felt newer and sounded bright again. But it also caused some fine abrasive scratches on the fingerboard. But I guess if you can figure a way of using that polish on the strings and then getting it off the strings without it making contact with the fingerboard, that might be an option. I wouldn't recommend it on anything valuable though.