Help feed the hungry and get fresh new set of strings for your instrument — it’s a win-win situation for local musicians and community food pantries next week at PC Sound, as the local music shop hosts its biannual Food for Strings event.

The premise is simple. From Nov. 5 to Nov. 10, anyone who brings in a given amount of non-perishable food items or donates a certain amount of money can have their guitar, bass or ukulele restrung for free.

During the 2017 food drive, the store accumulated a total of 180 pounds of food and $231.47 in monetary contributions. All the donations collected will benefit Eagle’s Wings Food Pantry and the Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina.

“The Food Bank of Central and Eastern North Carolina, we’ve included before,” PC Sound Office Manager Stephanie Braddy said. “This year because they’ve been helping out a lot with Hurricane Florence victims, so we felt like they could really benefit from this.”

In order to have a six-, seven- or eight-string guitar or ukulele restrung, it takes a donation of $5 or five food items. For classical and 12-string guitars, the minimum donation is $10 or 10 food items. Basses, due to the higher cost of strings, require a $15 donation or 15 food items, adding an additional $5 for each additional string.

As to the cost of the strings themselves, Braddy says that string makers DR and D’Addario are both incredibly generous during the event, providing the strings at no cost. For the store, this means the only cost is the time it takes to do the work.

“They love to help things like this, so it’s nice working with companies like that,” Braddy said.

While strummers get a solid deal during the event, drummers, pianists, flautists and musicians of all stripes also have a good reason to participate — donating enters them in a drawing for a chance to win a PC Sound gift card to spend on whatever their heart desires in the store.

Held every spring and fall, the event has been ongoing for the past four years, alternating between collecting food for animals and food for people. Donations in the spring benefit the Pet Food Pantry of Eastern North Carolina.

Food for Strings runs Monday through Friday of next week at PC Sound locations in both Washington and Greenville. For more information, visit www.pcsound.net or call 252-946-6100.