Will this cause my strings to break sooner?

Question

I'm always putting my (electric) guitar into different tunings.. drop D, open G, 1/2 step down, whole step down, whole step up, etc. I do it quite often.. like once every few days or so. I have a feeling my high E string is going to break soon.

Answer 1

Don't worry about it. Let me give you some perspective. I play pedal steel guitar which also uses electric guitar strings. Are you familiar with the instrument? It's played with a bar (slide) and has multiple pedals which raise and lower individual strings. Chord changes are made by a combination of moving the slide and stepping on pedals .(and knee levers) So in the normal course of playing one song, some strings get raised or lowered hundreds of times. The string that's most prone to breakage is the G# to A pull. Imagine tuning your high E (.011) 4 frets higher and then constantly bending it to A. These strings last a month or so of heavy playing. I almost never break any other strings.



You can see that changing your tuning every few days is the pedal steel equivalent of about 10 minutes of playing. It can be argued that changing tuning *does* stress your strings, but they'll die of old age before they snap from metal fatigue. You should be changing them every few months anyway for optimum tone.

Answer 2

How do you know if you need new guitar strings?



For Acoustic and Electric guitars

Couple of questions to answer:



1) Have you had the same strings on for over 2 months?

2) Are your strings rusty?

3) Are your strings rough?

4) Do your strings sound dull?

5) Had a string break recently?



If you answered yes to any of the above, its probably time to replace your strings.



Because of moisture on your fingers and in the atmosphere, strings corrode and rust over time and their ablility to vibrate diminishes. This not only causes the sound to dull but even worse, the feel of the strings becomes rough and will hurt or even damage your fingers.



Strings can also become brittle from too much vibration, just think of how a paper clip snaps if you twist it too much, the same happens to strings - especially if you use a lot of different tunings.



If you play a lot, say for 2 hours a day every day, then you should look at changing your guitar strings every month.

If you play less, but still strum most days, the max you should leave them on the guitar would be 2 months.



Strings are quite cheap, about £5 for a set of 6.



There is an alternative to changing your strings this often. You can buy coated strings. These last longer due to a coating on the strings that prevent dirt build up and corrosion. Coated guitar strings tend to last 3 to 5 times longer than normal strings, so you can leave them on for longer. These still need to be changed though. At least every 6 months these should be changed as they are also prone to breaking because of the vibrations of the string as explained earlier using the paper clip analogy.

Coated strings do cost more, about £12 for a set of 6, but last longer, so can work out more cost effective.



Ernie Ball Coated Strings have titanium reinforcement to make them stronger and less prone to break making them great for alternative tunings.



For Bass Guitars, the strings are much more substantial and tend to last longer and hold their tone. Change bass strings at least once a year.



For Classical Guitars with nylon based strings, again because of the way they are made, they don't rust, so last longer. They do age though, so do need replacing. When they age they tend to stretch and become hard to keep in tune. If you don't want to wait till this starts happening, you should look at changing them every 3 to 4 months.



So to summarise:

Change your Electric / Acoustic uncoated strings at least every 2 months.

Change your coated Electric / Acoustic strings at least every 6 months.

Change your Bass guitar strings at least once a year.

Change your Classical guitar strings at least every 4 months.



Details of guitar strings can be found at the Guitarbitz Guitar Strings page.

http://www.guitarbitz.com/guitar_strings.htm

Answer 3

If you stretch a string to it's normal position and then only change it slightly such as when you are tuning the string should last longer than when you change it frequently as in drop tuning.

However good quality strings are designed with more drop tuning in mind and should last several hundred hours of playing. Strings usually start to loose their best sound around the same time.

Strings will not last forever, no mater how well they are made.

Answer 4

Dropping down(lowering pitch) shouldn't really put any more stress on your strings. Raising them might make them blow a little premature (no pun intended) High E's break all the time regardless of what you do especially if you play pretty hard.

Answer 5

if your string is breaking off right at the tuner it is becoming weak from continuously changing the tuning. the metal gets weak from bending when you change tunings