Strings are meant to be wasted

I keep coming across people who are proud not to be cleaning their strings. To them, strings are expendables, they were meant to be thrown away in the first place so why bother keeping them pristine, they have a good life anyway. They go to the dumps thereafter.

I suppose this is the byproduct of this day & age, where strings are not difficult to come by; just pop into an instrument store or a music school & there you have them- guitar strings galore. When I was younger, buying strings would mean, firstly, saving up the required amount before proceeding to the store. I wouldn't ask this from Mom because it's strictly my vice, I do not wish for someone else to supplement my indulgence. Strings are my thing, let me suffer for it.

Secondly, it would mean knowing what to buy. Unlike the current situation where the internet presents to the buyer a variety for the picking, we were quite clueless as to what was good & what was the get-by brand. This was when I'd spend time on Friday evenings at MPH's Stamford Road branch browsing unsealed music magazines to read what's out there for us. Most of the time, it was the commitment of what's available to memory; there were no smart phones to capture images on our behalf & this was the time before PDAs came into play.

Thirdly, asking someone else's opinion was inevitable. I used to know a bunch of Mat Rockers who hung out at the void deck figuring out chords for pop songs & they were there armed with their Kapok acoustics. If you spot someone playing a Congress then it's a call for respect as this was a mark of seniority both in terms of playing time & one's financial capacity to upgrade to a more lavish brand name. One of these Mats handed me his freshly strung Congress, letting me hear his profound discovery- you got to hear this!- I remember him say. The tone was rather captivating coming from an acoustic & the strings in question was Ernie Ball. Not bad at all, considering those strings were meant more for solid body electrics as opposed to acoustics per se.

So the string-buying episode, to round things up, would be a weekend of shop-hopping (not many shops to hop to those days, mind you) & finally parting with good money for a pack of fresh strings. You know how it was with string packaging back then; there's no guarantee of a rust-free content but Ernie Ball did it for me.

Back to our string cleaning conundrum- to clean or not to clean, what say you? I see this as a necessity; I cannot bring myself to start playing a guitar when the first thing I feel is dirt. I don't mind a broken-in feel, but dirty strings I cannot accept. This is not a compulsion on my part to make you mend your ways but the very least you can do to your set of strings after play is to wipe them down with dry cloth. You might disagree to the investment of string cleaning fluids or the likes, but this is the most economical respect you can give to your instrument & more importantly, to yourself. 

I dislike being brand specific when it comes to such discussions but I get egocentric remarks from players & this is an example: Oh, I do not need to clean my strings, I'm using Elixirs! Elixir, Melixir, Delixir- they all trap dirt. I'm not arguing the manufacturer's capability of prolonging string life but dirt left behind on strings is a different matter altogether. 

'I don't clean my strings after use, they are meant to be replaced anyway'- if you are living by plastic spoons, try applying this philosophy.