If you are anything like me, this happens most often when you are with your friends screwing around, playing a lot harder than you really should and BAM! You are out one, single, guitar string. For me it is usually an e or a B, sometimes a G… but you are faced with a decision now: should you change one guitar string or all 6?
Changing a guitar string isn’t all that much work. Once you have changed a few you start to get the hang of it and you can do it with your eyes closed in 2 minutes or so but the real question is why would you want to change just one? Well here are a few things to consider:
- If the guitar strings are old, changing just one can be a waste since you are going to have to change them all soon anyway and then the one string will be out of sync with the other 5
- Changing just one makes for an incomplete pack that is left over
- The one string will be too bright and ring out differently than the others.
Then again if the strings are all mostly new, it would be a waste to change all of them since the remaining 5 still have quite a few songs left in them before they will go bad. Then again you might be in the middle of a gig and need to change as quickly as possible so changing a guitar string is the most viable option.
I guess the best way to sum it up is this: If they are old, change them all. If they are new, change one and keep the other 5 for backups. Or if you have all the time in the world I guess you could go to a little shop and buy a single string… LOL, I haven’t done that in years!