String Safety

[Clive Hugh]

A safety message here. One of the high school bands in our town has a guitarist who never trims his strings, which is not uncommon. Anyway a week ago he succeeded in poking one of his bandmates in the eye with a string end. Much pain and and upset. If you fall into this category do yourself and others a favour, cut the ends off and fold the sharp bit down. It's simple music industry safety.

 

[apl]

yes, good advice. i think them old Fender tuners that held the end of the string were cool.

 

[gusfinley]

woah...

This is why I always wear eye protection when playing my guitar!! You never know when a string can break and flip up into your eye!!

 

[Humbucker]

Yep - it's one of my pet hates as a guitarist. I've known people who think it looks cool to have the strings hanging from the headstock. IMO it's dangerous and looks pretty stupid.

 

[snipeguy]

Slightly off topic but here's a story about what can happen with guitar strings. I was once doing a gig in a band that had another guitarist (Murray) who played acoustic. So we're in the middle of a song and I hear Murray break a string. I look over to razz him a bit only to discover that the high B on his Martin D-48 has not only broken but the the busted end is completely lodged in his forefinger. He looks at me for help as he is obviously in pain and no matter how hard he pulls the string will not come out. I go over and give a try but that sucker is in there. We figure out that there is a barb on the end of the string. I quickly go to my gig bag and get my pliers. I give Murray the "are you ready" look and he nods. I pull on the string and nothing! It won't budge! At this point Murray screams at me (over the band, they are still wailing away) to "get that fucker out". So I grab his finger like I'm getting ready to chop kindling and give a real pull. Pop. Out comes the string and yes it has a barb as well as a nice bit of flesh from Murrays finger. Murray looks releived, sucks the blood from his finger and proceeds to change the string before the end of the song. I go back to playing just in time for my solo. The show must go on.

 

[boingoman]

My God-daughter got blood poisoning from one. She was staying with me for a couple of days. Poked herself pretty good. Woke me up the next night with a black line from her thumb almost to the elbow.

Trip to the ER, IV antibiotics, PITA.

Snipeguy- awesome story.

 

[Sanjanjoseph]

Hahahahhaha, i never knew how vital it was to cut your stings low....im a guitarist in a school band...if that happened to me.....well lets just say the music teacher hates me enough for soloing while shes in the middle of instructing the other instruments....but hey, can you blame me, it gets so boring way in the back with the keyboards

 

[mikeh]

snipeguy - great story! I've been gigging for close to 40 years and I've never seen something like that (I've seen plenty our cuts & scratches - but never something like that!

 

[snipeguy]

Let's hijack this thread and post our "gigs that went horribly wrong stories". Here's a quickie. I used play in a Big Band and stages were always too small for the 20 of us and our music stands. At one outdoor gig our first trumpet fell of the stage backwardsand banged himself up pretty good.