Bad to remove all strings from a guitar at once? (HEY WILL)

[Nebulous]

A friend freaked out at me today when I loosened all my guitar strings to gain access to the fret board to clean it and apply lemon oil. Apparently he had read around the net that it was bad to take all the strings off at once as it puts stress on the neck. I'd never heard of this before and have been doing it to all my guitars.
Is there any truth to this?
I'd imagine that it would have to be done to a guitar at one point in it's life either for a good clean, refret/ fret job, etc.

 

[Harry Hughes]

I've done it plenty of times to clean and wipe down the fretboard with lemon oil, polish frets etc.
And nothing bad has ever come out of it.
I mean fuck, a guitar isn't made with strings on it, there was a point in time before it had strings on it, and obviously the necks have held up fine on pretty much most good guitars.
I guess he'll freak out when he finds out guitars don't magically drop from the sky completely, fully manufactured with strings on them

 

[Nebulous]

Lol, that was sort of my reaction too, but I'm not going to pretend that I know everything about guitars and wood. I mean, I could see that it would be bad for the neck if all the strings were cut at the same time once a week and the tension was INSTANTLY removed from the neck, but for it to be loosened over a few minutes and cause damage would surprise me.

 

[Harry Hughes]

Having come from a background of fucking with guitars with locking trems, I have a habit of only removing one string at a time anyway regardless of whether the guitar has a trem (or any kind) or not. I think as long as you only remove one at a time, it will be okay

 

[Ionei]

You'll be sweet for sure man.
I've had strings off guitars for a while before and they've needed nothing more then maybe a truss rod tweak.

 

[kaomao]

It's because if you have a floyd you can set it up faster this way (removing one at a time) not because it stresses the neck, otherwise my old Jackson from 93 would be already broken while it's still alive and well.
I always remove all the strings putting the back plate of the floyd, the one to access the springs, under the floyd itself so it's still straight, this way I always clean the entire fretboard.

 

[Melb_shredder]

^^^

Exactly this. So long as you take them off one at a time, going from thickest to thinnest, that way the tension drop becomes less and less

 

[16S]

I've removed all strings to clean and re-string for 20 years. No probs!

 

[Metaltastic]

How would removing tension from the neck put more stress on it?

 

[Dalinkwent48@aim.com]

idk if this is right or wrong but anytime i take my strings off i go from the outside and work my way in.. IE- Low E, High E,A,B,D,G

 

[Metaltastic]

idk if this is right or wrong but anytime i take my strings off i go from the outside and work my way in.. IE- Low E, High E,A,B,D,G

Yup, same here, and also when putting new strings on or even tuning

 

[Force666]

It's fine. The only thing I wouldn't recommend is doing it right before tracking. You should let it set back up strung and in tune overnight. Otherwise you'll be fighting a tuning battle while the neck relief resets itself.

 

[JeffTD]

Two words: truss rod.

 

[colonel kurtz]

Two words: truss rod.

for sure

taking all the strings off won't cause any sort of damage. i mean, for god's sake, it's just a piece of wood!

like someone else said, it's a lot easier to do one at a time if swapping strings on a floyd...other than that, shouldn't much matter

 

[Force666]

I'm not sure exactly what Jeff meant. (As in, I think he was replying to Marcus and explaining how it would put "stress" on the neck)


But, the truss rod puts counter tension on the neck to counter the strings tension. So in theory if you take off all the strings the truss rod is actually pulling the neck backwards. Taking off the strings for a bit and putting them back on won't make much of a difference, but if you leave them off for a long time you should consider relieving the tension on the truss rod.

 

[abt]

I'm going to disagree with you all here. Many years ago I was talking to a guy who has been building, collecting, restoring and selling guitars since the 1960s. He told to me never take all the strings off unless absolutely necessary. I won't say who he is because I don't want to quote him out of context, but he and his is family have been involved in guitar building for a long time and are extremely successful.

I didn't believe him until he showed me guitars that were 30yrs+ old that he had used this way. The necks were in great shape. He then showed me ones that hadn't been looked after and you could tell the difference. He then showed me identical acoustics that were 20yr+ old that he had performed this exacted experiment on. The one where the strings had be replaced one at a time where perfect. The ones that had all the strings removed were not. Strangely, the neck was not that bad but the soundboard raised up an a bit warped.

For me it comes down to this: It is no risk to leave them on and it is no extra work to leave them on so I leave them on.

 

[Lasse Lammert]

it's different for acoustics than for electrics.
electrics are fine, acoustics are a bit more sensitive

 

[no.mop]

If you don't have all the strings off then how would you polish the frets or apply lemon oil to the fretboard? I can't think of a feasible way.

 

[Nebulous]

Neither can I....

 

[MarcusGHedwig]

Well it's not like it takes that long to do those things, I guess just keep the time all strings are off to a minimum! (or just not care, that's been working out ok for me so far, and I don't plan on having any of my current guitars for the next 20 years :Spin: )