When (Or How Often) Should You Be Changing Your Strings?

By Joshua LeBlanc

This is a question that many students ask. The quick answer is it depends on many factors.

Here's the longer answer:

At the very least you should change them every six months (assuming you are playing every day). If you are playing everyday then you should change them more often and there are multiple reasons for this.

First, your strings are made of a softer material than the fret wires of your guitar. Over time your strings will develop grooves that mold around the fret wire. When this happens you'll find that you are having to press down harder on the string in order to get your string to make the pitch you want with out any additional noise. This becomes a losing battle over time because the harder you push on the string the deeper the divot becomes. Why do we not want these divots? The reason is that the string only needs to make contact with the fret wire of your guitar, not the wood of the fret board. When you use more pressure than is necessary on your string not only will you create divots in the string, but you'll also create divots in your fret wire, fret board, and you will have notes that aren't quite in tune.

Second, strings oxidize over time. This results in them becoming more brittle and stiff. As this happens you'll notice that strings that were silver will start to darken. One way to slow down this process is to wipe your strings after you play on your guitar. This removes the oils and dirt from your fingers from the strings. However, this will only slow down oxidation, not stop it entirely. Since your strings become brittle they are more prone to breaking on you (which you don't want to happen, especially if you are in the middle of a performance). They also will not be as resonant as they were when you first put them on your guitar so this results in a “dead” sound which just means that they aren't able to vibrate and create sound the same as they originally could.

So with those bits of information, you can see that you need to change your strings a bit more often than you may have been. As a rule of thumb I change my strings once a month if I'm performing regularly. If it's a guitar I don't normally play I may not change the strings for quite some time until I decide that I want to use that guitar again. I always keep an extra set of strings in my guitar case for the guitars I use to perform in case an accident occurs and a string breaks. With guitars I use to perform regularly, I change the strings after every 5 performances or after two months (which ever happens first) or any time I plan to use the guitar to do recording (with the exception of a demo if the strings are fairly new).

To learn how to change your guitar strings check out this video.

Joshua LeBlanc is the owner and instructor at Lafayette School of Guitar specializing in guitar lessons in Lafayette, LA.