Way back when-how often did they change strings?

[Stinsok]

Nowadays, strings for guitarist/bassists are easily accessible. Heck, even if you order them it's possible to have them delivered via next day air. I wonder how often people like Woody Guthrie or Hank Williams changed their guitar strings, or even found strings back then.

I can imagine them pulling up to a country store and asking for Martin Mediums only to hear the clerk say "we carry FOP."

[René_Julien]

I would assume they probably would've hamstered. Stocked up. Buying a dozen at once when they had the chance.

dunno

[Turock]

When I was a kid (late 50s early 60s), I remember seeing Black Diamond strings at places like the local drugstore.

[stratovani]

I would think that back during the Depression, when jobs and money were very scarce, musicians would baby their instruments, wiping down their strings after a gig, removing them and boiling them every once in a while, keeping things nice and tidy. A broken string probably meant either scrounging a string off a fellow musicians (he'd sell you one for a couple of cigarettes, if he had one to spare) or going to the local music store and buying one on credit (paying him back after the next gig).

You kept your strings on your instrument a good, long time!

[ggunn]

Originally Posted by Turock

When I was a kid (late 50s early 60s), I remember seeing Black Diamond strings at places like the local drugstore.

My dad ran a drugstore back then, and yes, Black Diamond was the only game in town and his store is where I got them. Black Diamond Burnished Steel strings were the first flats I ever saw.

I changed (acoustic - I was a folk singer at the time) guitar strings only when something catastrophic happened. I never trimmed the ends; I left the extra string coiled up at the peg so when I broke a string at the bridge I could pull the rivet out, pull some of the extra string through the peg, run the broken end through the rivet, twist it up, and stick it back in the hole. I can remember some rivets having three or four tag ends pulled through when I would finally change them out.

Things are better now...

[Pilgrim]

Nobody talked about changing strings in the 60's when I started playing. The strings that were on my P-bass when I got it refinished in 1972 are still on it. They work just fine.

I suspect that in the early half of the 20th century, most players only changed strings when one broke - and often, only that string.

[kissmybASS01]

Ummmm....I thought those early strings were made of animal sinew

I imagined them as stuff like Roundwound gut strings

[enemybass]

thatll be why evey bassist sound like a reggae player

[tplyons]

Carol Kaye didn't change strings. She changed basses.