So, eventually the wound strings on my gizmo accrue blackish gunk where my fingers hit the most. Presumably the bulk of this mystery matter is dead flesh (mine) and the rest a small percentage of, say, personal salts and lipids, barbecue sauce, hair tonic, etc. Anyway, this sort of encrustation is bound to deaden the tone of one’s strings. What I do periodically is take a fingernail cosmetic brush (stiff nylon bristles), and give the strings an occasional vigorous scrubbing. I place a buffer between the fretboard and strings (a patch of thin leather, in my own case), and keep my free hand firmly on the strings near where I’m scrubbing too keep them from vibrating too freely as I clean away. I’m convinced it rejuvenates the tone, and the practice allows me to hang on as long as possible to a set of strings before having to reluctantly put my miserly hand in my pocket and shell out for a new set.
I will embarrassedy reveal that I don’t. Still, even if I did, I suspect that simple wiping wouldn’t tackle the stuff in the deeper recesses BETWEEN the windings. That’s what I’m talking about.
Nano, maybe you just need to learn to use a napkin!
My fiddle strings don’t seem prone to crud accumulation at the finger end, but perhaps fiddle strings are less gunkophilic.
At the bowed end, I wipe off excess crusty rosin with a standard wine cork, which is a trick I got from fiddlefork.com.
I have nylon coated Elixir strings on my dulcimers. The coating serves two purposes. Since all of my strings are wound (being a bass) - the coating means I can do slides on them and avoid that annoying sound that usually happens. Plus the coating makes the strings last a lot longer because my skin isn’t actually touching the strings.
I think they start the coating at about a size .020 or so…
Back when I played Mandolin before I traded it for a Tenor Banjo, I tryed elixirs and found that the coating would wear away at the pick end. Nano try wiping your strings off it might solve this problem, and if not it can’t hurt.
I’ve had that happen, too - but they still have lasted longer then the non-coated.
Plus I tend to change strings pretty frequently (usually once a month during the summer, more humid months, but I can get through the winter months - about 3 or so - with the same set). When I was playing a regular voiced dulcimer, I would change the melody string (a size 0.010) a lot - it just seems to go dead really rapidly. For $1, it’s no biggy to have a brighter tone.
Nanu,
One question no one has asked…how long have the strings been on your gizmo? Perhaps it’s time to change them. Nothing makes a gizmo sound better than a new set of strings.
I would recommend washing your hands before you play. Wiping the sweat off the strings, and the rest of the gizmo, after playing is also good advice. I keep a chamois in my guitar case for that purpose. Some peoples’ hands sweat more than others’. If you are a hand sweater you should wipe down the strings several times during your playing session. Sweat is a real string killer.
I have actually heard of people taking strings and boiling them for a few minutes to clean them. Caution! Don’t try this with nylon strings. Steel only! They say boiling revitalizes the strings. I say, buy a new set of strings, cheapskate.
Mike
Oh, but how we are a throw-away society. There are poor gizmoists in Cuba and the like, and we Yanks go merrily off to buy new strings at our merest whim. I’ll bet the underprivileged have to consider foregoing food for new strings. And once again, I come under scrutiny, being accused of putatively gunkophilic digits and ghastly hygeine, where all I was about was economy and a real desire to be helpful to you all. So much for noble intentions. Sigh.
Seriously, though, with occasional cleaning, I do need to replace the strings less frequently, and there comes a point when the tonal quality goes south in its own time (which, as it happens, is in fact coming to bear).
what size strings does your gizmo take? I’ve got gobs of extra strings (we use many different sizes on our various dulcimers, and sometimes wind up with some oddball sizes that don’t fit anything we have). I’ll send you any that I have that fit what you’re playing!!!
Corrosion in strings are somthing that I have taken quite an intrest in, esspecially guitar strings. The problem with guitar strings is the design. Alot of guitar strings have a steel core and copper windings, or some such.(different core and winding) The moment you take the strings out of the package the string can begin to corrode.(the package has an inhibitor so the strings won’t corrode before they get to the customer.) This is due to galvanic corrosion (corrosion between disimiliar metals. When you play your fingers provide an elctrolyte due to your oils. (if your have a lot of acid or salts it will increase the rate) This creates a corrosion cell. (basically a battery) The winding is the anode, core the cathode and your oils are the electrolyte. So the strings begin to corrode and leave behind scale. This scale is sometimes greenish blue, black ect..and is product of the winding (ussually). By eleminating the electrolyte you cut down on the corrosion rate. This is why wiping down your strings prolongs the life of your strings. This is also why elixer strings last longer. The coating prevents the electrolyte to contact the meteal. I can not see how boiling the string can give your strings more life. The oxides are there…your just putting them into another electrolyte. If only the string companies would use similiar metals…they would last so much longer. There is one company that makes a set of strings that use similiar metals…(nickel and titanium come to mind) but they are so expensive that you might as well just buy regular strings and replace them. I change my guitar strings about twice a month…Hope this wasn’t to technical
Boil the bejaysus out of them and they’ll be as good as new.
The thing to watch though is that as you take an old one off, put a new one on and tune it up. This will keep the tension on the neck pretty constant throughout the procedure. Gizmos in general don’t take kindly to having all of their strings removed at one go and then a new set put on straight away. Far to much stress on the neck.
this is also a good idea if your gizmo has a movable bridge, instead of a fixed one! If you take all the strings off at once, you may wind up needing to do a complete “set-up” again.
