Ok, well I tried the string boiling thing, dried them off nicely and tried to put them back on. Got 3 on fine but due to the stupid way that my strings are attatched to the wee posty things (it goes inside and its just very confusin for a n00b like me
) a bend in the string had weakened and snapped! Unfortunately cos of this daft way of winding the strings it wasn't long enough to put on after that... wont be boiling my strings again!