Rule #1 when playing out and a string breaks - Do not stop playing!

+1 on Rule #`

When anything happens, if you can continue playing, continue.

If I break a string, I put the guitar down and quickly pick up the wind synthesizer. I have a half dozen good guitar patches on my VL70m synth, and since it uses Physical Modeling synthesis, the parts are very guitar-like in both tone and expression. Since I mostly play lead, this works just fine.

If I'm playing rhythm, I turn the volume off and continue playing until the song is done. (Thanks to the vibrato bar the guitar goes out of tune when one string breaks)

But unless the string is defective, they don't break. Why? I change them often. I might break one guitar string every 4-5 years. Usually the winding on the ball end is the culprit, unwinding because it hasn't been manufactured properly.

I make my living playing music, and when on the gig, I have the responsibility to minimize anything that will stop the show. Changing strings, bringing spare synth modules and an extra wind synth (since it can cover any of the other instruments), spare cables for everything, spare mic, and anything else that is likely to go wrong, as long as it can be carried with me.

So the best way to handle broken strings IMO is to change them often enough so that broken strings are rare.

It's about being professional and prepared.

Insights and incites by Notes

Yep ...don't stop playing.....

And that was really hard with my Gibson SG due to it having a whammy bar tremelo that was notorious for throwing all the other strings out of tune since my perfectly tuned SG was essentially a balancing act of the tension of all the strings. As long as they were all intact, that guitar could hold tune through the entire show under normal situations. Of course, we always topped off the tuning before each set.... and I kept the Conn connected to the amp output for spot checking in the middle of the song or the set. Handy.

My fix, was to change the strings on a regular basis when I was playing professionally so that breakages were at a minimum. I knew that with the Ernie Ball strings, I could easily get 2 weeks on a set. Beyond that, I was pushing my luck. My Paul, on the other hand, no one ever knew a string had broken except me. It didn't have a whammy bar on it. I could finish the song and the rest of the set with a bit of improvisation for the lack of that given string. Usually the high (.009) string.

I was buying string sets by the case full.

+1 on Rule 1

Channel Mick Goldrick and practice playing on 1 or 2 or 3 or 4 or 5 strings
5 strings way more than you have to have.


Remain calm.

Put a new string on when you're not playing.
Change the set after the gig.

I read a story once about Larry Carlton breaking his high 'E' string during a solo. He then proceeded to take out a pair of nail clippers and cut the 'B' and 'G' strings, and played the rest of the solo on just the bottom three strings.

Breaking a string is not a big deal, easy enough to continue until the end of the song, unless you have a floating tremolo system as Herb mentioned, then you are pretty much screwed. I haven't used a guitar with a whammy bar for probably 20 years, but when I did I had the springs tightened up so that it could only bend down, that way the guitar would stay in tune if I broke a string.

Seasick Steve make do with 3

My band was playing the Altoona Holiday Inn one night and we had a new lead guitarist who was a bit of a heavy metal musician who hadn’t totally bought into the mostly top 40 format that we performed. A group of his band mates from an old group were sitting at a front table heckling him most of the night but he perked up when we announced an Aerosmith song that he could show his stuff on.

He got pretty aggressive and broke a string on a bend and the next thing we knew he had launched his Les Paul at his hecklers and stomped off the stage leaving the rest of the band to finish the song without him.