UPCYCLED STRINGS

Thanks for writing in to share your memories of an early love, Philip. It’s very interesting to try to trace the backstory of such instruments as their origins are often now obscured by the passage of time. Yet we may trace striking similarities with other guitars such as Elvis’s archtop and draw some conclusions – certainly it’s possible that the same type of guitar might appear under different brand names during that era, being produced by a parent factory for various clients. Can any readers shed further light on the origins of Philip’s possibly-Isana archtop?

Thanks for pumping out a great magazine month by month. Although in Australia we get each issue two months after it’s published in the UK, the wait is worth it and I look forward to all the articles and reviews.

As a keen amateur guitarist, with seven guitars (and an eighth one underway via a new kit-build I’m doing) plus a six-string banjo, a mandolin and a Strumstick (a fun three-stringed instrument I picked up at New Orleans JazzFest in 2015), I change my strings on a regular basis. I’ve always been concerned about what to do with the old strings, as throwing out such valuable natural resources in this day and age of environmental awareness just seems so wrong.

Over lockdown I recycled a few strings by making bespoke cheese slicers for the family using some G, B and high E strings, and an internet search only seems to come up with making jewellery from old strings. D’Addario has a string recycling program, which I tried to join, but unfortunately that only seems to be active in the USA at present.

With all the strings used worldwide by all the guitarists out there, the wastage must be huge. I’d love you or your readers to give me, and all players out there, an idea of what we can all do to reuse or recycle our strings and help minimise this large loss of natural resources. Paul McCarthy, via email Thanks for sharing your thoughts with us, Paul – it’s a really good point. A lot of technology and high-grade materials go into each set of strings we buy. Even if we buy long-life coated strings, eventually they reach the end of the line and… then what? D’Addario’s Playback recycling scheme is an interesting response to that question – from what can be made out on the company’s site, you collect 900g (2lb) or more of strings of any type, from guitar to orchestral, and ship them to D’Addario to be recycled by its partner TerraCycle in return for reward points redeemed through membership of their Players Circle club. Sadly, the site explains that this scheme is currently open only to players in the USA at present – but hopefully it may broaden in time or inspire other makers in the UK, Australia and elsewhere to get in on the act, too, since D’Addario also adds that 1.5 million pounds of strings simply go to landfill each year at present when the metal could be smelted into new alloys.