How Often Should I Change My Guitar Strings? By Jake Lenhart

This is a question we’re often asked. Unfortunately, there’s not a single simple answer.

How often do you play? How long do you play? Where do you play? Where do you store your guitar? What’s your body chemistry like? What brand of strings do you use? How clean do you keep your hands before playing? Do you live on one of the barrier islands? Are you heavy-handed, or do you play with a light touch? How particular are you regarding your tone and ability to keep the instrument tuned? The answer to all of these questions matter when answering the question of “how often”, making it next to impossible to directly answer the question of “how often” when we’re asked.

What’s so bad about old strings anyway? The tone, the intonation, and the feel.

The tone of old strings will be sound dull and lifeless, almost as if when you strike a string you hear a “thud” rather than a tone. Since this is such a gradual process, your ear may not notice the degradation in tone on your guitar. But if your strings are long overdue to be changed, you will immediately hear the difference with a new set of strings. Every day I hear, “It’s sounds like a brand new guitar!” after I’ve changed someone’s strings that were overdue.

Old strings are much harder to keep in tune as well. You’ll particularly notice this on strings you tend to bend a lot, like the G and B strings.

Finally, old strings will have a rough feel to them, making slides, bends, and vibrato more difficult. This will be most noticeable on the thinner strings, like the E, B, and G.

So, back to the question of “how often”…. There are people who change there strings daily, and that’s right for them. That’s rather unusual, though. For most people, monthly to every three months will work out well. You’ll have to experiment to find the right frequency for you.

If in doubt, look at your E and B string. Are they still silver, are they discolored, or are they black? If they’re silver and you aren’t a professional, then you’re probably fine with the set you’ve got.

Somewhere in between, and you should consider changing them. If they’re black, you’re way overdue and need to think about not only changing them now, but also changing them more often.