Can a string taken off a guitar be used again?

April 4, 2021 1:44 PM

I'm brand new to the guitar and my first try at restringing didn't go well. I misjudged the thickness of the B and G, and D and A, strings and ended up stringing the guitar E G B A D E. Two questions: 1) Even though the strings are out of order, am I right to assume the guitar can still be tuned properly? In that's the case the strings can just stay where they are, right? 2) If not, can I re-string the guitar with those same 4 strings, or should I buy new ones?
posted by BadgerDoctor to Media & Arts (10 answers total)

Bad news and good news:

1. No, not really. The gauge of any given string defines the general region of notes it will be able to produce strung on a guitar and that range is not nearly wide enough to get to a standard tuning with the strings in the wrong order. (There's a world of experimental tunings out there to explore, but that's advanced class stuff and is not where you want to start.)

2. You totally can! Just unstring and restring in the correct order, the strings will be fine.
posted by cortex at 1:51 PM on April 4, 2021

1. No
2. If you didn’t already snip the excess off, then yes definitely. You might have some wonkiness if the string is already shaped into a coil around where tuning peg was (it won’t be in the same place along the string).
posted by supercres at 1:52 PM on April 4, 2021

1. Sort of. You’ll probably be able to tune the strings to the right pitch, but they will be way tighter or looser than if you had the correct string in that position — since the pitch of the string is determined both by the weight and the tension. Not good for the guitar. It also probably won’t sound as good and might go out of tune more easily.

(A professional musician I follow on Instagram just posted about accidentally doing an entire recording session with two of her strings switched!)

2. If you haven’t shipped the excess off then yes! Otherwise probably not, I don’t think you can tie the initial knot without some excess to grip onto.
posted by mekily at 1:59 PM on April 4, 2021

Yeah I think every string player has at some point accidentally swapped a pair of strings because they got distracted during the stringing process. Usually you can swap them back -- barring having snipped them too short to restring, or having done something awful to them during the stringing process.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:04 PM on April 4, 2021

What everyone else said, though as supercres says if there's a kink in the string where you've put it through the peg and it's on the nut side after you re-string there's a chance it'll break when you bring it up to tune.
posted by holgate at 2:09 PM on April 4, 2021

and just FYI most music stores will sell you a single string so you won't need to buy a whole new set, though it's always good to have a spare set on hand anyway. Just bring the package with you so you know what gauge to buy.
posted by bondcliff at 2:50 PM on April 4, 2021

Good answers all above, I'll just note that, if you really need to, you can tune a string lower than what it should be (so, use an A string for the low E, etc.). It'll sound like garbage, and the action will be all wrong, but it'll work well enough for that time when you're in the middle of your punk band practice and you broke that goddamned G string you always break and you're all out of G strings (because you always break that specific one). However, you should never try and get a lower string to go higher. That's how you either break strings, or, god forbid, break pegs or necks.
posted by General Malaise at 4:43 PM on April 4, 2021

You can reuse a string that’s been strung on the wrong tuner but be aware that the bending and flexing over saddle and nut will weaken the string and it may go before the others.

I actually managed to break the inner core of a bass string, or something happened to it, once, during some restringing misadventure. Maybe it was defective, I don't know....I also may have broken it when I was trimming it, I suppose. it sounded very dead, especially for a new roundwound bass string.
posted by thelonius at 5:15 AM on April 5, 2021

You could tune them to the pitches that each string was made to be tuned to, and then play around with the possibilities that unleashes. I mean it! Alternate tunings open up all sorts if new options.
posted by umbú at 11:09 AM on April 5, 2021

Thanks so much everyone for all the great advice.

My guitar looks great with its brand new strings, all exactly where they should be. Not that I can play the five cowboy chords I know well enough to know if it sounds any better.

(to be continued...)
posted by BadgerDoctor at 6:01 PM on April 5, 2021