Guitar Strings

Its almost a year since I got my self a brand new guitar and it was about time that I change the guitar strings. For quite some time the thinnest of the pack ( string 1 or the bottom most string ) was sounding a bit wierd. It was looking a bit rusty so I decided that why not get it changed, it had been a long time since the strings got changed.

My brother had mentioned to me a new guitar shop that had opened up in the locality, which according to him has all the good parts. I trusted him and thus I got my first replacement pack from there, and to my surprise a mere pack of 6 strings cost me Rs. 500 . It was a pack of strings branded under the name of "Dean Markley". I had never changed my guitar strings so I was totally a noobie in this area, but due to my own over confidence, I did not check up any guides on howtos to restring a guitar. So as you can imagine, I messed it up and got a horribly over tensioned guitar that could go bust any moment. Consequently, I had to get another pair of strings. This time I went to another shop from where my brother usually gets the strings. From my brother's description I had imagined a big old shop with lots of customers and instruments, but much to my dismay it was a small shop, that had no customers and everything was under the a thin cover of dust. I again got a set of strings ( 6 of em ) , but this time I got the cheaper pack ! Boy o boy, I should have expected this earlier, the sound of these strings was pathetic. They didn't sound right, they were too light and just not suited for the guitar I had.

Thus I finally realized that with a good guitar, you need a good string to make it sound right or otherwise everything will go awry. Though along the course I realized how foolish I was to unload all the strings and then try to restring the whole batch in a go. Also a few broken string, due to excess tension, poor grip, etc got me to learn the practicalality of the Strain - Stress Yield Curve that I had long time back learnt in school, college and university but had never really understood it correctly.

So if any of you are planning to change your guitar string, I would recommend you to see atleast a few tutorials that are readily available on the internet before you get started. Believe me it will save you a lot of money !