Prevent Your Guitar Strings From Rusting With These 4 Tips

1. Don’t Play With Sweaty Hands

Excess sweat and grease are two of the most common problems when it comes to strings rusting. The main reason is that both sweat and grease contain minerals such as sodium, calcium, magnesium, and potassium. When these minerals pair with the natural toxins your body secretes, corrosion takes place. Overall, moisture from liquids also plays an important role in string corrosion. Now, if you’re a sweaty person like me, your string set’s life will dramatically decrease, and you’ll have to change strings all the time.

2. Don’t Store Your Guitar In A Humid Space

As I mentioned before, humidity and moisture are also two of your guitar strings’ worst enemies. In fact, having your guitar strings be in constant contact with humidity exponentially increases the rate at which they rust. This happens when you combine oxygen, moisture, and electrons found on metal.

The humidity levels are related to the moisture in the area you live in, the materials used to build the space you’re in, or storing your guitar in a poorly ventilated area. That is the main reason why your guitar strings start to rust at a faster rate.

3. Don’t Buy Bad Quality Strings

Buying cheap strings can be very enticing, especially if you need to change them frequently. However, in the long run, there’s a big downside to having poor-quality strings.

Let’s talk about string material first. Your typical guitar string’s core is completely made of steel. Manufacturers then use different metal alloys for the winding of said string.

The most common material used in string winding is nickel-plated steel. This material is more susceptible to rust than other alloys such as pure nickel or zinc plated steel. However, cheaper guitar strings corrode faster, which, in turn, will force you to change them more often. You will end up spending more. Go for quality guitar strings.

4. Don’t keep Bad Hygiene

Apart from moisture and sweat, there are other corrosive agents we put on our strings. Dirt, dead skin cells, and grime are the most common elements we transfer from our hands to the guitar strings.

It only makes sense our hands will transfer a lot of dirt since it’s what we use most in our day-to-day. If we have poor hygiene habits, it is more than likely we will constantly transfer these agents to the guitar strings, which will create corrosion at faster rates.