Way back in the 1960s It took a big chunk out of my paper round earnings to buy strings for my guitar, so if a string broke, and it was usually the 1st string, then I learned how to tie reef knots in strings, it is not easy and you do get stabbed in the fingers a few times but it saved money.
Well I was doing a bit of extra work on the steels string and I snapped the first string between the nut and machine head. I only have one set of the slinky strings so I did what comes naturally and tied a reef knot in the string and it tunes up and plays nicely.
And there it is.
It has been about 42 years since I last broke a string.
I have been playing the steel string quite a bit and it is settling down quite nicely now. I will post an audio file of it later, I just need a bit more practice with those highly flexible slinky strings.