Sam Bush is the mandolin god, not the fiddle god. He's still great, but when he's playing fiddle, he's playing it like a great mandolin player. It's a wonder it's only horsehair he breaks.

Leenia that business about not changing them all at the same time is common knowledge. Sometimes I do it the one-by-one or two-by-two way, (mostly on fiddle or mandolin where it obviously does matter cause you'd have to reset the bridge) sometimes all at once--in the real world I've never found any negative effects from all-at=once. Has anyone?--on a regular guitar I mean.

People that never change strings are very dear to me. They have terrible sounding instruments that I can buy very cheap.

Most of such instruments need a set of new strings, a damn good cleaning, a tweak of the truss rod, tightening of tuners, maybe pickguard gluing. Then presto--they have become quite serviceable $100 student guitars.

Oh-oh, my ethics are showing. But after all, I am...
Willie-O

p.s. I do have one 20-year-old instrument with 20-year-old strings. That would be my hammered dulcimer. Once a year I get it out, steel-wool the strings, tune it after a fashion and bang out a few tunes. I'm trying for 30 years from the strings, by then my best years will be behind me and I won't begrudge the time spent changing them so much.
W-O