Sanding your wound strings

[Sacco]

A friend of mine told me he and his group of friends, all professional classical guitarists, take a piece of sand paper and lightly sand the wound strings to dampen the fret sounds.

I tried on my Argentine 11s in my Gypsy guitar. The fret sounds were killing me and in this style is hard not to make more fret sounds than usual so even with good technique is not possible to really deal with them.

The trick is to sand alongside the top of the string (not all around it) and strip some of the silver coat. After a little the sandpaper (400grit then 1000grit) will have a copper look.

After cleaning/lubricating the strings. Checking the strings shows the string top copper material exposed.

Results: The fret sounds dampens substantially.

[pcjazz]

Before or after you boil them?

[Sacco]

Before of course. You wanna get rid of the sandpaper bits.

Also you wanna add elasticity. If it sticks to the wall you've got it right.

Mamma mia....the questions ppl asks in these forums

[Sacco]

Now seriously. I'm playing "Si tu Savais" (Bireli Lagrene version) and it was quite fretting, now it sounds much cleaner and the strings didn't lose brightness. (these are fresh new strings)

[blille]

So you make the wound strings... flatter? Like... flat-wound strings?


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[Sacco]

No. The tutorial here states the process doesn't involve flattening the top of the strings.

2 Simple Tricks to Reduce Guitar String Fingernoise | HubPages

[Dennis D]

Before or after you boil them?

..." and do you put salt in the water ? "

[rob taft]

..." and do you put salt in the water ? "

Olive oil

Seriously, work on your technique and if you really like round wounds which I do, learn to live with a bit of string noise.

[TH]

I sanded my fingertips. It got rid of all the noise. Worked like a charm. All the time I was in the hospital at least.

David

[rio]

I have done this to reduce finger noise and it worked and sounded good but the hard part was sanding uniformly and not making some spots around the curve of the string flatter than other parts.


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[Sacco]

Pretty effective. Also is good I can sand only around the actual fretboard playable area so the strings don't get dampened around the body area.

[Peter C]

Lots of fingering and fretting techiniques (mine, at least) involve slurring and sliding and I find the notion of lifting digits delicately off the strings in order to avoid squeaks terribly inhibiting. So, next time I string up with rounds, I'll give this a try. Thanks.

[Sacco]

I find the notion of lifting digits delicately off the strings in order to avoid squeaks terribly inhibiting

Totally. Specially after knowing how flat strings allow you to move freely.

[neatomic]

I sanded my fingertips. It got rid of all the noise. Worked like a charm. All the time I was in the hospital at least.

David

thats an old bass players trick...sanding the fingertips...stanley clarke used to rub his fingertips against a brick wall!!

sanding strings is just gonna remove the plating..also the dust will get into the windings..not optimum

just buy the right strings in the first place..and play them enough to get them the way you like

cheers

[cosmic gumbo]

I just rub some KFC chicken on my hands and strings, and it quiets things way down.

[blille]

I just rub some KFC chicken on my hands and strings, and it quiets things way down.

I've heard chicken legs make great slides. You may want to push your boundaries and incorporate that in your playing.


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