Guitar Gear

A buddy of mine and I were having a discussion once about when we change our strings. He changes strings every week, whether he’s gigging or not because he likes that brightness and his hands sweat a lot. Me? I’ll only do a full change maybe once every couple to three months, if that. And in between, I just change them as they break. Plus my hands don’t sweat much, if at all, so I’ve never experienced the corrosion my friend described – yuck!

And mind you it’s not laziness. I just don’t like the bright sound of new strings. And almost never play unplugged – even with acoustic – if my sound seems a bit dead, I just add a little treble, and it usually doesn’t require much.

Plus, I like to fight with my guitar a little and older strings require a bit more work to get a good tone. To me, there’s something to digging into the fret to make a string sing. Is it weird? I don’t know. Maybe it is. And maybe my tone sucks and people are too nice to tell me to my face.

My personal preference for a guitar sound, especially with my acoustic, is for a much more subdued sound than with brand-new strings. I eventually do get to a point where I’m just not getting anything out of them and I’ll change them out entirely. But my usual practice is to just change a single string if it breaks.

But that said, I did change strings a bit more often, like every three or four weeks when I was gigging over 200 days a year. With that much time on my guitars, they got to their point of no return a lot faster. These days, I’m gigging maybe 75-80 days a year, so I just keep them on – sometimes for months.

I also think that part of it is due to the picks I use and my pick technique which has gotten much lighter. I use Wegen Picks Fatone (it’s literally misprint on the labeling for “fat tone”) picks. These are 5 mm thick with a nice bevel. Using a fat pick has made me pick a lot lighter which means less stress on the strings.

I used to use Dunlop Tortex Medium and Heavy picks (orange and yellow), and used to absolutely hammer my guitar. I’d break strings all the time. But with my Fatone, it’s more of a brushing action. So they just don’t wear out. Plus with a fat pick like the Wegen, the bevel makes a bit brighter of a strumming tone.

And I also play with coated strings (Wyres Coated Phosphor Bronze 12 16 24 36 46 56 I prefer the fat 5 and 6 strings), so they last a long time. And by the way, Wyres are awesome strings, handmade in Canada. If you’re interested in checking them out, don’t order direct. Buy them from Elder Instruments. If you order from Canada, it’ll take weeks for delivery. They offer a bunch of different gauge combinations. Great bass response!