New strings!

JBroll

I MIX WITH PHYSICS!!!!
Mar 8, 2006
5,918
2
38
San Antonio, TX, USA
Hmm... it appears I have mail.

Is it can be string tiem?

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IT CAN BE STRING TIEM!

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As some of you will recall, I ordered some gigantic fucking strings for an adventure or two in F#. How gigantic?

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This gigantic.

But first, we have to show the Blackjack some love.

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Yes, that is a broken E string. A 52, tuned to E, succumbed to my absurdly heavy-handed playing a good while back, and rather than put on a new set of *normal* strings I ordered these.

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That is what happens when the core wire snaps on the bridge. No fun.

We proceed to observe the fretboard that hasn't been oiled or cleaned in a good while, and the strings that have been sitting there doing nothing since the E broke.

Toothbrush and furniture oil to the rescue!

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But there's one problem...

Fuck imperial units!

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Ounces = fail.

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I prefer to squirt some oil into the bottle cap, dip an old toothbrush in it, and use that to apply (side-to-side, parallel to frets) to the fretboard. It's wide and brushy enough to cover evenly, and the bristes also get in under the frets well enough.

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I'm fairly generous with oil. It's cheap.

After the oil has set in, the board looks much better.

There's a very subtle but very nice-looking streak of lighter brown near the thin-string side of the neck that I felt like taking pictures of.

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Is pretty colour.

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And now it is time for strings.

(To be continued...)
 
B

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F#

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D

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A

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E - before, I had simply used a 52 and let that be the end of it, but after breaking a perfectly normal one I didn't feel like risking it - felt a little light, anyway...

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B

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And...

*drum roll*

*continuing drum roll*

*drum roll pauses*

*drummer is shot*

*drum roll is resumed by backup tape player*

*tape player is shot, for the purpose of gratuity*

*drum roll materializes out of nowhere*

...

F#

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Yes... a DY90, for F#.

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Fucking massive.

The only problem I ran into was - SURPRISE, FUCKING SURPRISE! - the 90 didn't fit in the hole. This was solved by unwinding part of the top wrap, which itself is pretty fucking big.

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Here's about 70% of the unraveling finished, laid out on my bed/workstation (I don't sleep enough to justify only using my bed for rest, I put the thing to good use) - it's pretty fucking long. The next pic is just a few wraps away from completion - in its unstretched, mostly-coiled arrangement it is still long enough to reach from the tuner to the string ferrule ON THE OTHER SIDE OF THE GUITAR.

Lots of fucking unwinding.

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The strings sit in/on the nut fairly well - I like high action and a high nut slot, so it worked out perfectly.

Here are the strings, after tuning and everything.

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The Jeff approves!

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Clips will come when I feel like sharing.

Jeff