When I was a kid growing up around Tucson, I didn't have any money. A friend of my mom’s had cracked a guitar and was planning to throw it into a backyard bonfire out in Tanque Verde. I desperately wanted a guitar, saw this thing about to get incinerated, and begged them to let me try to fix it and keep it.
After hauling it home and wood-gluing it back together to the best of my 12-year-old ability, I realized I didn't even know what kind of strings it took. I honestly didn't know "guitar strings" were a manufactured product you bought at a shop. So I spent a couple of weeks experimenting with yarn, twine, and scrap wire. At one point, knowing that wax was crucial for skateboarding curbs on 4th Ave and waxing candle wicks, I coated several four-foot lengths of kite string in candle wax and tried tuning them up to pitch. To my utter shock, they kept snapping!
Because my options were strictly limited to whatever was sitting in our garage, copper wire was my last resort after ruling out rubber bands. It wasn't pretty, but I was able to wring a consistent tune out of it and play along to one very metallic, not-at-all-bassy note at a time—plucking out Green Day and Jimi Hendrix while staring at the Catalina Mountains.
Then came the day a used set of nickel strings got tossed in the trash by the same guy who nearly cremated my first guitar. My mom had the incredible foresight to ask, "Can my son have those?"
And that was my very first real set of strings. They already had probably 100 hours of sweat and desert dust baked into them, going onto a guitar that was almost burned alive, tuned up on cracked pegs with a pair of rusty pliers and a lot of wincing.
I'm still pretty broke, but these days I can occasionally afford a fresh pack of D'Addarios.
I just took a set of strings off my acoustic guitar, so I'm offering them up for anyone in town who can use them for anything.
An old bandmate of mine who used to play dive bars along Speedway used an old G-string as a DIY tattoo needle back in his wilder days. These might be a little too gunked up for prison ink, but far be it from me to tell you how to utilize free gear. I used to collect the brass ball-ends to make jewelry, but it took way too many sets to make a single bracelet, and once my coworkers saw them, everybody suddenly wanted one.
If you can use 'em, let me know and I'll hold 'em for you. They are seriously, seriously old. I just got back from a brutal multi-city tour, and honestly, the strings hadn't been changed for six months before we even left town.
If you're reading this thinking, "You're the worst musician in Arizona, change your strings more often," I have no defense. I blame the summer heat, I blame the local economy, I blame whatever political party you hate most, and I blame the Oxford comma.
