I wash and dry my hands before I play my bass. I regularly wipe off my strings, neck and belly of my bass after practice or rehearsal. I also use a bit of methyl hydrate on the strings every week or so to keep the finger gunk from building up.
My strings have been on about 10 months and I was noticing the strings were starting to get dull. I used to boil my all-steel strings occasionally but I thought that might damage a hybrid string (EP's). The water might soak into the filaments and swell them under the windings. I think the same would happen if I soaked them in methyl hydrate.
So instead I loosened a string until it was quite floppy then took a terry cloth that was quite wet in a small area with MH and ran it up and down many times. I bent the string so it was an "S" between my thumb and forefinger. This opened the windings so the MH could clean between them.
Wow, I couldn't believe the amount of goo that was hidden in there!! It took about 5 minutes of rubbing the string and using different parts of the cloth before the dirt stopped coming out!
After I finished the first string, I tightened it back up and compared the feel with the other strings. The clean string was definitely smoother and shinier. The others looked duller, felt rough and not actually sticky but definitely resistant to my finger sliding up and down. And I thought I had good string hygiene!
After the rest were done, I played it for a while and it's like I have a new set of strings - bright and clear sounding, responds fast, and it's easier to shift because my fingers aren't dragging on the string.
The tuning should stabilize in a day or two. Hopefully, the honeymoon phase will last a while.
