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How long has it been since you last broke a string?

1986 - last note of our last song at the battle of the bands my senior year of high school. Crowd was digging us, we were rocking all original material, and I was playing way too hard. Hit that final big crescendo and it gave up the ghost. One of the few “just like a movie” moments I’ve had in my life.

Except we did not win, which is how I knew it was not really a movie...
 
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I broke one string in almost 50 years of playing. It was sometime in the 80's. I don't even remember which string it was. I was playing my pre CBS 62 Fender jazz with a Badass II bridge. I have no clue what brand of strings I was using. I had no spares and no spare bass. Lucky for me the sound guy had his Fender jazz backstage, and quickly brought it out to me after we finished the current song. He put a new string on my bass from his spare set and got it back to me after one song... And the show went on...
 
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When actually playing: around 1992/93 when I still used a pick and played METAL, lol.

During setup: 3 times the last couple of weeks thanks to the useless new fluted tuning machines on the Fender American Professional series. It's the G-string that breaks, again and again. Unless you leave enough string length to fill the entire tuning post those fluted shafts will pull the string downwards and create far too much tension at the angle where the string goes into the tuning post. Seriously, if you need to fill up the tuning post with windings to avoid breaking the string, WHAT'S THE POINT??? Useless piece of junk. This is just Fender trying to fix a problem that isn't really there. If they had simply installed a string tree for the A-string the whole issue about tension over the nut would be non-existent.

Strings where the total uncut length of the G-string won't give you more than 2-3 windings on the tuning posts (like TI Superalloys) simply can't be trusted with these new fluted Fender tuning machines. I broke three Superalloy G-strings during setup and then just gave up.

So thanks Fender for ruining three sets of Superalloys with your useless and completely unneccessary "innovations". It's a shame really, because I absolutely love the sound of Superalloys + the V-mod pickup.
 
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While gigging I would break one string sometimes, 80’s through early 90’s.
I’m not sure but I believe once I began session work, I haven’t broken a string since.
I used to play extremely hard but now I pay pretty darn light and use the power of the amp.