At a gig in 2018. I hadn’t changed strings on the guitar in over a month and had been using it heavily at practices and another gig. That was my fault. A string snapped at the bridge from corrosion and a little overzealous picking.
More guitars than anyone could need
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Metropoulos Metroplex Mk I
Egnater Seminar Amp 50
Orange Rockerverb 50 Mk III
Peavey 5150
Fender 1976 Vibrolux Reverb
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Marshall 1960A G12M25 Greenbacks
Metropoulos Slant 2x12 G12H75 Creambacks.
It's been at least 20 years. Probably longer. Most of the times when I broke a string, I was working on the guitar, doing a setup or changing pickups without removing the strings that kind of stuff.
I always take 2 guitars to gigs just in case but I don't recall ever needing to switch.
While I've been on a decent roll the last few gigs, I break a string at a lot of shows, probably close to 50%, at least electric shows. I usually gig with 3 guitars, so its not a problem, and its rare for me to have a floating tremolo setup at a gig (though I recently did bring a Strat set to float, and did a series of gigs a few years ago with an RG550 that floated), so I'm not in a big panic if I do pop a string.
Amps: Morris Sirrom
Guitars: Charvel SoCal MIJ, Assorted parts builds
I believe it happened more often when we had bad, or no monitoring at all. Intuitively you start picking/strumming harder because you desperately want to hear yourself. These days with a decent PA and playing less loud gigs it did not happen to me anymore.
I don't remember ever breaking a string live. Have not played out in probably 15 years though. Even when I am jamming at home I can't remember the last time I broke string. I did cut a freshly installed string right at the tuning post about 5 years ago. That pissed me off.