I used to break a lot of strings, too, for several reasons:
I always bought the cheapest strings I could find.
I used extra light 8-gauge strings because they were “easier” to play.
I was completely tone-deaf and as a result tuned the high e to breaking many more times than I’d like to admit.
1st is easy to remedy, and won’t even cost much - e.g. D’Addario is a quality brand with acoustic sets as inexpensive as $6.
2nd is personal preference, but I probably wouldn’t go below 11s on an acoustic.
3rd is the most difficult to remedy, or at least the most time-consuming. If it’s a problem for you, too, well, my only advice is to purchase extra high e strings until your ear gets the hang of it, or if you can, tune with a buddy nearby who has better trained ears.
As others have mentioned, it could also be something related to the guitar, but if nothing jumps out at you as terribly wrong, I’d probably try to rule the above out first before taking it to a luthier. Good luck, and don’t give up!
I don’t have any trouble now, but when I was first starting, I did all of that and still tuned the high e to breaking many times, even after having it more or less in tune initially lol.
I literally couldn’t tell if it was sharp or flat, but that was many years ago before electronic tuners were ubiquitous - OP, if you’re still using a tuning fork or something like that, get an electronic tuner.
In fact I’ve only broken one string in 2 years, and that was on a new guitar which I figure had been sitting in the store for a while having a bunch of people play it. It broken when tuning - to standard.
I started using 008 for E string. It kept breaking almost every half an hour. I took my guitar for set up. Should wait two weeks! In the meantime I am using 009 on my other one. It worked fine until I practiced a few fast full bends on Fret 10 and BANG!!
My question is:
Does polishing frets solve the issue even for size 008?
Does it have to do anything with forceful, fast bending rather than more gentle and slower?
Looks like you are in BLIM2.
I went through BLIM1 with the same set of strings (yes, for 6 months - 8 now actually). I have broken two strings in 4 years - my first string change when I did not realize I was tuning too high, and my second was just recently when I had loosened strings on my kit build to adjust something under the pickguard. Tightening string 1 back up and it barely made it to C and it popped. It broke at the tuner. The tuners are low quality and probably need a little work to clean them of sharp edges.
I have kept my frets polished. I have never had trouble with string wear beyond the wound strings getting a little full of finger oils and dirt and sounding dull. I also don’t think string gauge has much to do with it. I have used 10 to 8 for long durations.
Like Rob said, look at where it is breaking and look for an edge that might get it to break.
When I did Blues Immersion 1, I did break like 2-3 high E strings in the first months of the course.
I bought a few extras, but I have never used them.
Somehow, I did not break any after that. So, I think that it was technique related in my case.
