SIGNALCHAIN
Don’t Break the Chain(s)
Greetings, everyone! Before we meander
down the signal chain any further, I thought
that it would be a good idea to talk briefly
about maintaining your chain and keeping
everything in good order. Practicing some
simple routines will help you avoid any
breakdown in your signal chain.
The very first part of this maintenance
schedule involves keeping your strings as
clean as possible. Since this particular subject happens to be very near and dear to
me, I have discovered a few handy tricks
and developed some basic rules throughout the years that will keep your
strings squeaky clean at all times.
Rule number one suggests that no
one other than yourself should
handle or play your instruments. It may seem odd, but
there are several important
reasons for this rule. Most
importantly, it will completely sidestep the possibility
of mixing any other player’s
skin chemistry with your own
skin’s acid/oil makeup.
So what can we do to prevent our strings
from suffering an early death? Luckily, the
cure is amazingly cheap, coming in the
form of a plastic bottle of lighter fluid
(either Ronsonol or Zippo brand fluid will
work just fine). This is simply the best couple of dollars you’ll ever spend for a literal
ton of sonic prevention. The lighter fluid
will safely and quickly remove all traces of
acid and oil from the tops of your strings.
tonal terrorism if done in excess or incorrectly. A well-designed string should stretch
out within seconds – not 15 minutes or
more, as some people have reported to
me as of late. Several gentle “pinch and
release” lifts between the pickups using
your thumb and index finger should suffice.
Do not yank the strings in a Robin Hood
“bow and arrow” motion either. This one
mistake can kill strings faster than you might
realize. Slow down and get it right – your
guitars will thank you many times over.
This compound chemical reaction can prove quite fatal to a
set of guitar strings and the real
bummer is that it can – and will
– happen when you least expect it.
Say you keep a guitar out in the open
on a stand or wall-hanger and one of your
friends happens to pick it up and play it for
only a moment or so. If you don’t remove
their personal acids/oils from the strings
immediately, their funky acidity can mesh
with yours – all of the sudden, your strings
are dead. Bear in mind that this can happen in an incredibly quick amount of time,
depending on the other person’s chemical
makeup; it’s no exaggeration when I say
that I’ve seen this exact casualty happen in
less than five minutes.
You’ll want to use common sense, but the
lawyers insist that we’ve got to print the
following: do not use lighter fluid around
anything flammable.
If you are regularly breaking strings by the
bridge saddles or stop-tailpiece, chances
are you have a microscopic burr in the
bridge saddle or elsewhere in that
general area. I’ve seen the smallest
burr slice through a . 105 bass string
like it was cheesecake. Bending
strings is an art form that can take
years to develop properly; if you
slow down a steep bend, you’ll
notice that you actually bend
the string up just a hair before
you finally take it all the way up
to the desired pitch. This slight
motion can prevent most string
breakage. If you have strings break-
ing above the nut or in the middle
of the fingerboard, that’s the telltale
sign of a defective string; likewise, if you
see a kink in any string of more than 30-45
degrees you can consider it history. Strings
should unravel straight and have little bend
in the length as it points downward. If any
string seems to be in an arc (or semi-circle),
then the string has been wrapped in the
package too tightly. This can cause the
string to wear out sooner than if it were
loosely wrapped.
It should also be noted that what people
eat and otherwise ingest can drastically
shorten your strings’ lifespan – even certain
over-the-counter medicines can cause total
and complete mayhem. When you think
about the possible costs of this chemical
interaction, it can be amazingly high, especially if you’re the type that changes strings
before every rehearsal or gig.
One of the greatest characteristics of lighter fluid is that it evaporates within only a
few seconds – it will not hurt fingerboards
when used sparingly. Just put a half dollar-sized spot of fluid on a clean cloth and run
it up and down the entire playing length of
the string, from the nut to the bridge. You
may also want to slightly loosen the string
so you can wrap that cloth around the
whole string when cleaning. After cleaning
each string ,simply retune and you’ll be
good to go.
The moral of this story is this: take special
care to make sure your guitar is setup correctly for you and clean your strings on a
regular basis. Both you and your instrument
will perform infinitely better. We’ll see you
next month.
Over-stretching strings is another act of
Dean Farley
is the chief designer of "Snake Oil Brand Strings"
( sobstrings.net) and has had a profound influence
on the trends in the strings of today.
