Dishwasher?

[Baker69]

I've read various suggestions on the Forum for cleaning/re-juvenating bass strings, but has anyone tried putting them in the dishwasher?

It's surely gotta be better than boiling them in a pan of water hasn't it?

I've just put an old set of rounds in ours - it will be interesting to see the results!

[sedan_dad]

give it a go.

[Deacon_Blues]

Seems like a good idea, might try that myself. Just remove them promptly after the washing program to prevent eventual rusting.

[ubado]

A dishwasher should work well for the surface finger grease, and dirt; however I don't suspect it'll work better than "boiling."

With boiling, the scalding water temperature along with its effervescent (bubbling) properties; actually infiltrates the nooks of the strings to aid in removing the dirt/grease.

A dishwasher just uses high pressure "hot tap water" (along with a cleaning agent) to clean the surfaces of objects ... not all the nooks. PLUS dishwasher detergent is very harsh ... who knows what this will do to strings.

Nice "Outside the Box" thinking! Gotta keep us posted.

[Luckydog]

expect rust. Water and strings are not a good match. Use denatured alchohol. Its a better solvent than H2O and evaporates.

[Chinguschild]

why couldnt you use one of those utrasonic parts washers

[NJL]

search denatured alcohol... don't use water.

[Baker69]

Well, the result was that the G & D strings seem to have come out the best, the A not so bad but the E virtually no difference.

Bearing in mind these strings are pretty worn out I wasn't really expecting miracles but I think it's given them a few weeks' extended usage.

What does happen though is that the binding gets well waterlogged and has actuallycome off the G string in places. (If I was boiling strings I would keep the ends out of the water normally).

I think as ubado says perhaps a dishwasher isn't as penetrating as putting them in boiling water.

Talking about boiling strings, I've heard a couple of tales of people boiling them in salt water, and also vinegar?