The Steel Guitar Forum

A number of years ago Buddy Emmons visited here and talked about various things.
He said back in the days when He could'nt afford to change all His string as regularly as He would have liked,He would only change the plain ones and then unwind the lower(wound) strings a little and then give them a good pull upwards and let them snap down which removed a lot of the gunk.!!

Snap them down on the fretboard a couple times. Works pretty good.

I have played bass for near fifty years and always had the habit of wiping the strings before, during and after a gig or practice. For some strange reason, I never thought of doing any more than a dry rag wipe of my Steel's strings.

As for the snapping the strings down onto the fretboard; I wonder how long it would be before horizontal marks or chips started to show on the board. Maybe a piece of thin plastic or Teflon might work for snapping the strings onto.

I am going to try the alcohol thing on a rag to clean the wound strings and see if that works.

I used to play with a bass player that would order a shot of vodka each set and wipe down the strings..
Made me nervous to watch and I would have have a shot just to wipe down my vocal chords...
An old Ozark boy used to swear by eating a bag of potato chips before a gig to keep the Telecaster strings slippery.
With steel guitar I change them pretty regularly..
Universal is nice because I change the 3-5 every 12-15 hours and then just put on a new set the next time.
A fresh set of strings is a good thing.

Les Anderson wrote: Have any of you guys ever had a look at your wound strings through a magnifying glass and noticed that they are gummed up with dead skin and dirt ?

.

No...

I use my magnifying glass for reading now ! .

chris ivey wrote:ken...why would you 'not dare to' boil your steel strings like you did the tele strings? they're the same thing.

Hi Chris
Well, I wouldn't mind the risk of string breakage where there is a static string on a 6-string or bass guitar as string breakage would be unlikely. However, I don't know what the effect on a wound string that has gone through a substantive period of stretch and release would be after boiling it. I just have this feeling that the 'elasticity' quality of the string might be affected. I could be wrong.