String Changing Regimen

[jalevinemd]

This one goes out to my fellow skinny six stringers, as I'm not sure what you bass players do with those suspension bridge cables you use.


I was curious to know when you change you strings before a gig:


1. A few days before
2. The day before
3. The day of
4. Doesn't matter


For Saturday gigs, I've been changing them out on Thursday evenings. I change them on average every 4 weeks.

[cozmik_cowboy]

I don't gig, so every few months if I'm slacking off, every few weeks if I'm not.  When I used to go to open mic night every Monday, I stuck to the same schedule, but always did it on Saturday.

In my roadie days, I'd do guitars every other week, on Sunday afternoon.  (In 7 years of doing it, I think I changed bass strings thrice.  Only 2 for the same player).


My reasoning on both was to give them a chance to 1) stretch in properly, and 2) to lose that slight edge of harshness most new strings have.

My friend Jim Post had an endorsement deal with GHS back in the day that included all the strings he wanted, free.  He changed his every set.  That always struck me as perhaps a tad excessive........


Your regimen seems quite reasonable to me.


Peter

[jazzyvee]

When I was touring as a guitarist i ended up changing my strings every other gig otherwise they would break. So effectively on the day of the gig usually pre soundcheck so i could eq them in advance of showtime. The downside was having to retune a few times during the set. The reason for the changing so often was that under the lights (pre LEDS) my fingers would perspire and take the nickel coating off the strings. Eventually i changed to Elixir coated strings and was getting a couple more gigs out of each set of strings. These days i don’t do so many guitar gigs so just change them maybe a couple of days before a gig but no hard fast rule and that is more from fear of them breaking than any other reason.

[lbpesq]

If I’m going to change strings, I do it a day or two prior to a gig.  I then play the new strings hard for a bit, re-tune, play, tune, etc., especially if the gig is the next night.  When I played D’addarios for years, and then GHS Boomers for years, I would change before every gig and the strings lasted about three weeks before they would noticeably lose something.  Since I’ve been using Optima Gold the strings last much longer.  They still sound good two or three months later.  As a result, I no longer re-string for every gig.

Bill, tgo