When to Replace Guitar Strings

Video Transcript

"Now if you're taking a string off of a guitar, so you can put a fresh set of strings on, there's a certain way to do it. If you leave strings on a guitar un-played for about six months, they're going to become oxidized, which means that the chemicals in the air and the chemicals in the string will react in such a way that they'll become duller. The biggest thing that will dull a string is the grease on your fingers, just the human oil that comes out of your fingertips when you're playing, sweat even. Now, that's going to impact the brightness of the string, so you might have a crisp string when you initially put it on, or kind of a dull string if it's covered in finger oil and grease. So you might want to replace the strings periodically. Now, you don't want to take a scissor or a wire cutter and just clip the string, there's so much tension on it, it will fly out, could hit you in the eye, it's not a good idea. So you always want to detune the string, making the tension less and less and less and less until you get to a point where you can take this string and unwrap it by hand and pull it out of the tuning peg."