I recently changed my guitar strings and experienced a significant change for the worse in my tone. I have no idea what kind of strings I used to have on my SG because I had been using the same strings since we started The Compressions last summer, and those had probably been sitting dormant on the instrument for at least a year before that. With those strings, my sound was slightly muddy with a little crunch to it. I liked it.

I had a pack of Fender .10s sitting around and I decided to put them on last week because I was getting afraid that I'd be more likely to break a string on stage if I kept playing with such old strings. The result was my tone immediately got a lot brighter and thinner in a way that I despise.

So my question is, seeing as I have no idea what kind of strings were on there before, should I just wait it out and see if the tone gets better once the strings get deader? Or should I switch to something thicker and/or a different brand? I have a show on Saturday and I worry that if I change strings yet again this close to the show my tone will only suffer more.

just play your guitar non stop from now until the show

pour beer on your guitar

blood?


you have several options here

i don't think thicker strings will sound any muddier

you could maybe stab some holes in your amp's speaker cones?

all good suggestions. fender strings do suck in a very serious way, tho'. i like gibson vintage reissues. elevens. mud, crunch…shoooo. that's my stock-in-trade.

brand new strings are always going to sound a lot brighter, regardless of brand. you really do just have to break them in good if you don't like that tone. they'll get less treble-y the more you play them. if the tone is still too bright for you come saturday, try cutting some of the high end on your amp at show time.

if you're using a thinner gauge than before, you should be able to feel that. if the strings feel thinner, try restringing with some 11s. whenever you change string gauge, you should always have your guitar set up for the new string width. thicker string gauge might require an action adjustment, maybe even a replaced or re-filed nut.

Dude, how long have you been playing the guitar? A month? Everybody knows that when you get a pack of new strings, you drop them in boiling water for x-actly 10 min. Once they dry, you put them on your guitar.

for $25 an hour, I will play your guitar for 15 hours between now and saturday.

boiling strings is pretty much voodoo science. it's marginally helpful for refurbishing used strings as it removes the oils and grime left by your dirty little fingers, but for new strings the temperature isn't high enough to affect any metallurgical properties. basically, you just open the door for rust and breakage if improperly dried.

Easiest fix is to have you band go on last. Everything sounds muddy at 1:30am.

Boiling strings will make them brighter for a gig or two. I would've suggested boiling the old strings that you took off. I would go with 11s, too. But, don't worry about it. We'll just dial it in, in the mix. I think coydog is on the right track. Just drink a few more beers and go on late.

One thing that might work and is a lot of fun: get a really cheap Crate amp and throw it down a flight of stairs before the gig. Back in the day we got this really crappy Crate bass rig from the Flapjacks. Our guitar player was excited. He told us you could beat the crap out of a Crate and it would still play. We threw it down the stairs at every available opportunity. The wheels busted off of it and it still played fine. It was pretty muddy, too. I still have it and it still kind of makes some noise when it is feeling up to it.

I play a lot like Pete Townsend. Although, not sound wise, but we both have heavy right hands when we play. I can only use one string that lasts more than an hour for me. GHS Boomers. Actually, any GHS. I can't get to the point of having to boil them. Every time I've bought Ernie Balls, I break them within 5 minutes. No lie. One time my singer let me use his guitars. He has 5 of 'em, but he put Ernie Balls on all of 'em. None of them lasted through a song before I broke a string.

Usually, when you step up a gauge, the tone improves. I play .11's. I've tried .12's, but the .11's are just perfect for my small hands.

I like these:



Or these:


Prolly just old, cheap, and lighter strings you put on there. An SG will sustain until saturday with the power slinkys.

Gibson Vintage Reissues 11 gauge, I use them on my SG and they sound great. Too bad I don't have a band to play them in. Anyone need a guitar player?

if you're looking to go darker try flatwounds

You may also want to look at nickel-wound strings versus stainless steel - they're a little less bright sounding and also seem to get to that "broken in" middle ground more quickly than the stainless steel strings.

Ernie Ball makes the Classic Slinky series (i think that's what they're called) - just look for nickel instead of stainless.