There are a lot of destructive ways to use your guitar, a popular one is using fire to play smoke on the water, but there are even more ways to mess up your guitar without even knowing it. This article will give you a few tips to keeping your guitar in top shape for as long as possible.

String Care

Strings can get expensive to keep them in top shape. Especially if you play elixirs or other high priced strings. To keep replacement costs at a minimum you can keep your strings clean while your not playing your guitar. Just a quick wipe down with a cloth will help some. If you can get some sort of string cleaning product you may not have to replaces your strings for a few months. When you play your fingers deposit natural oils on the strings and these oils can corrode the strings and cause them to rust. The more you can keep these oils off of your strings the less you will have to spend on replacing strings every few weeks. You can also use string oils to keep the oxygen away from the strings, like 'fast fret.'

Bridge and Nut vs. String Gage

If you have bumped up your string guage you may find that your strings are getting stuck in your nut. You can file the grooves and make them bigger but before you do that you can try rubing a little cooking oil across the top of the nut. This will help the strings to keep lubricated and then they will be free to move.

If your guitar has a whammy bar there are a few things you need to consider before changing string gage. Your strings pull on the bridge with a lot of tension, in response to this there are springs that are pulling your brigde back down to the body of the guitar. It's like a big tug of war all the time. If you raise your string gage you are raising the amount of tension on the bridge, if the tension the strings are at is higher than the bridge springs then your bridge may start to rise up off of the guitars body. This is not good because when you tune you will change the tension on the bridge and the rest of your strings will become out of tune.

Electronics

The most common problems with electronics is the input jack coming loose. If you hear crackling when you wiggle your cable then your jack is a little worn or you have a bad soldering connection. You can take the input jack out yourself if your are a DIY person or drop if off at the local guitar shop to have fixed.