The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #92078 Message #1769034
Posted By: Richard Bridge
25-Jun-06 - 09:02 PM
Thread Name: rejuvenating old guitar strings.
Subject: RE: rejuvenating old guitar strings.
My "camping" guitar, on which Elixirs last me a year, pretty much only gets played when I go camping or to a festival etc. So it may get played almost non-stop for two to five days, and then not go out again for a couple of weeks, and the earliest outing in the year will probably be Miskin (at Easter) and the latest Tenterden in October. Some months will be busier than others. Also it is not a great guitar, and honks a bit on the B string so string deadness is not a huge loss.
But I have eight acoustics in the house and the three I play most (and like best) will get new strings more often than once a year - perhaps about every three or four months, and because of the fact that there are three of them they will not get the same amount of use that a single one would.
Mostly I use a plectrum, but not a very hard one - a Jim Dunlop 60. If I used a very hard one I would expect more fraying of Elixirs but although I get some it is not a big problem. I have never had a sliver of the coating get into a finger. Although I play pretty hard I almost never break strings.
I don't know if that constitutes the secret of how I get Elixirs to last a year, then there it is - secret no longer!