String Breaking Nightmare....

[paulkingsleysmith]

I'm leading worship on a weekly basis on my L201 and appear to be breaking an average of one string a week. I restring the axe with brand new D'addario EJ16 (light) strings each week but for some reason am suddenly breaking too many strings.

This increase started sometime after christmas, and has been gathering momentum ever since... what is going wrong?

I've been playing for about 10 years, and had broken very few strings until now

People have suggested that i move up from light to medium -would this help? Would it damage the guitar at all to do this?

The string breaks over the saddle - it's always a A or D string, which makes me wonder if the saddle is getting sharp and wearing through the strings.

Please please help me!!!

[JB]

have you looked at the saddle ? ... does it look or feel sharp ?

if it does then just give it a very light rub with 1000 grit wet/dry or "emory paper" if you're old school

take it slow, never rush any adjustments to the saddle.
let me know how you get on
cheers
Jim

[Son of Thunder]

Paul,

I switched to medium strings because the same thing was happening to me. After switching to Elixers, I'd get over a month out of a set of mediums, and that's with playing multiple services per week. If the saddle isn't causing your problem, you might give mediums a try.

[paulkingsleysmith]

Well, i figured out the issue; I hadn't set the guitar up since it came to me from the factory, so the strings were very high over the bridge, which appeared to be causing a lot of strain. So i took the bridge out, shaved a couple of millimeters of the underside, and it is now playing much better, cleaner, and i'm not breaking strings again

Well done me