this post was submitted on 11 Oct 2023
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You should tune your guitar. Not only is it good to train your ears but your guitar is designed to have strings on it that are in tune. Leaving the strings too loose might cause the neck to bend in undesirable ways. Especially if you’re in an area where the temperature changes each season.
Also, you’re not going to break strings from getting it in tune unless you go several steps above the intended note. Learning what an in tune string sounds like will help you avoid that.
^^this. The truss rod in the neck is (supposed to be, at least) adjusted to provide a slight relief in the neck that allows the strings to ring out properly. If the strings are not kept properly tensioned (tuned), you will either get a bow (less common, would be strings increasing in tension somehow on their own) or a back bow where the lower string tension causes the truss rod to bend the neck the other way. In the short term, this might not cause permanent damage to the neck, but left this way, when it does require adjustment it is possible to stress the neck itself and crack it, or possibly delaminate the fretboard At that point, unless it's a valuable or sentimental guitar, the cost to fix by a good luthier just isn't worth it.