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Anyone else prefer playing with, and listening to, dead strings? Saw an interview with the guitarist from Screaming Females, and she also doesn't really change her strings unless they snap. She also doesn't tune in-between songs because fuck that. In full agreement with her. Skin just adds to the flavour, amirite.

dead strings on acoustic - heck yeah
dead strings on bass - the only true way

dead strings on electric? goes out of tune, chords sound whack, no thx. maybe that's not "dead" as in less-than-fresh, just worn out? idk.

no one can hear the death of your strings when you step on the fab tone

in space no one can hear that your strings are dead.

i sometimes like dead strings for rhythm guitar, whether on acoustic or electric...it takes away some of the high-end ringing and sustain and is particularly nice for power chording. after a certain point i can't play lead on them though, cos they get too bent, dented, and tired to play accurately.

I remember reading Steve Cropper would leave strings on as long as possible, Mike Campbell too. Campbell leaves all the finger jizz on his guitars too and never has them cleaned.

Oh yeah I never clean either. I recall Sigur Rós's roadie talking about being yelled at by Jónsi because he cleaned his guitar, so I guess I'm in good company.

Duck Dunn did an interview with Guitar Player in the 70s where he said he hadn't changed his bass strings since the 1950s, excepting one string which broke in the early 70s.

I like it when my strings lose some of their harmonics.
How do you feel about the Dean Markley Blue Steel strings? The metalhead guy who owned the guitar shop where I used to buy them was disdainful because they sounded dead out of the package.

On regular solid body electrics, I don't like old strings. I'll change them twice a month if not playing shows and every four shows or so if on tour.


On the other hand, I mostly play an arch-top with floating pickups around the house, though I don't plug it in, and I leave the (nano web coated) strings on that forever, until they break.

On bass I'm a huge fan of old strings.

Acoustic too, although new strings sound nice I almost never change them because old ones are good.

For electric guitar new strings sound better, but I still don't change them that often because it feels wasteful. Tend to leave them till they get really dead and hard to play in tune

oldangelmidnight wrote:I like it when my strings lose some of their harmonics.
How do you feel about the Dean Markley Blue Steel strings? The metalhead guy who owned the guitar shop where I used to buy them was disdainful because they sounded dead out of the package.

Sounds great lol. One of my strings just basically dissolved, so, to my great dismay, I need to change strings now anyway. I'll check'em out.

Edit: Ah local store doesn't have it. Don't have time to wait for on-line stuff. Oh well.

On bass I would leave strings on until they failed. I had one bass that I never changed the strings on for my whole ownership of it. Sounded lovely to me but I think it frustrated the members of the melo-death metal band I was in at the time, they didn't appreciate the dub tone I was bringing even though it helped us sound monstrous live whereas all the other bands on the bill ended up sounding quite thin.

Now I use flats on bass and I love it, standard practise seems to lean towards getting 20 years out of a set of strings which is very much my bag.

On electric guitar I use rounds and I will usually get a good few months out of them, I'll change them if they can't hold their tuning anymore of if the unwound strings start to feel unpleasant.

I don't change strings until they break. But that's just me.

POINT A: I need this on a shirt:

dubkitty wrote:in space no one can hear that your strings are dead.

POINT B: it me:

dubkitty wrote:too bent, dented, and tired to play accurately.