Denatured Alcohol with steel strings?

[513rocks.com]

im switching to steel strings and was wondering if the Denatured Alcohol trick works with them. anyone?

[dlloyd]

Yes. It works.

[Shoewreck]

What's the trick? Is it all about cleaning?

[dlloyd]

When you have strings on an instrument for a while, you get a build up of dirt on them that affects the way the string vibrates. It's mostly dead skin cells and oily skin secretions. Nice.

One way to remove this build up is to boil the strings, another is to wash them in alcohol. Both methods work, but soaking in alcohol seems to be the prefered method.

Denatured alcohol is just bog-standard ethanol that has been rendered useless as a drink by lacing it with something toxic. Often this is methanol, which gives rise to one of its other names, methylated spirits. There might well be other things in there... make sure the string is thoroughly dried before slapping them back on your bass.

[Shoewreck]

No... No boiling. Water kills strings in a few days! I use alcohol on any kind of strings. Be shure to dry it quickly, because alcohol attracts moist from air.

[Luke73]

Personally, I just ensure that I wash my hands well before I ever play any of my basses.

Of course, the strings go dead eventually - but they last a very very long time.

I have some 6 month old DR Sunbeams on my A4 that still sound great! Still very bright. Actually...I'm kinda waiting for them to mellow out a little I have no reason to consider changing them yet.

When they do go dead, I'll put on new ones.

I don't like removing and re-fitting strings. I think that affects the tone in itself by bending them around the bridge and tuners, then straightening them when they are removed, then bending them again when they're re-fitted. As well as that the strings wear where they are in contact with the frets, and when they go back on that area is in a different spot too.

Come to think of it...I'm so pedantic, if I remove strings from a bass (even if they're still new) I toss them and put back on new ones.

[Shoewreck]

Do you mean I'd better give up drinking beer and eating chips on rehearsals?

[Luke73]

Originally Posted by Shoewreck

Do you mean I'd better give up drinking beer and eating chips on rehearsals?

Maybe wear rubber gloves whilst doing so

LOL

[tigersuit]

How long are you supposed to soak the strings in alchohol? How long would the whole procedure take to do all 4 strings? A couple of days?

[Aarix]

Overnight is fine, supposedly even just a few hours would work. I usually leave mine in for a couple weeks, not because it's better, just because I'm lazy and don't have anywhere better to put them.

I used to boil, but now I'm a big fan of alcohol. Two weeks on switch, soak, repeat. That way two packs of strings sound brand spankin new for months on end.

[tigersuit]

Ah so you have 2 sets of strings that you rotate? Thats a pretty good idea. Thanks for the tips.

[Modern Growl]

What I did was go two small pvc tubes from HomeDepot with caps on the end. One to soak, and the other to store the strings for next use.
A couple of hours works just fine. No need for over-night.

You can really get 3-4 uses out of strings this way!