Guitar Music Lessons - How To Change Guitar Strings
Date: Monday September 6, 2010Posted in: Entertainment
Sooner or later, all guitarists need to learn how to change the strings on their guitar. Occasionally you’ll be compelled to change one when a string snaps. But generally, you’ll simply wish to change them, as strings lose their brightness and wear out.
Most Expert guitarists often change their strings prior to each gig. But in the long run, it all comes down to a point of personal preference. Something to bear in mind if you’re using your guitar for a gig, is that your strings require a few hours of play to break in correctly. During this time, your strings will go out of tune as they stretch so you’ll need to retune.
Anyway, here’s what you do:
Take out the old strings by detuning the machine heads until the tension becomes loose enough to permit you to pull every string away from the headstock.
One more quick way to take out the old strings is to snip them using a pair of wire cutters. Be very careful if you do it this manner.
How you go about installing your new strings will generally be based upon the type of guitar you have, as many guitars have slightly various techniques.
Here’s a little insider tip guitarists have been making use of for years to get more life from your steel strings once you have removed them: Boil them.
Putting a set of strings into a pan of boiling water for 10 to 15 minutes will get rid of lots of the grimy accumulation and bring a new life back again to what would otherwise be lifeless strings.
It will not carry on for very long, and you can’t get away with doing it too many times, but it can be an efficient temporary measure.
Regardless of what kind of guitar you have, your strings need to be stretched after you have placed them on. When you first tune your guitar, put your hand under every string close to the pickup region, pull the string a few centimeters away from the fretboard, then release it. If the pitch has dropped, re-tune and repeat the process. Maintain doing this till all the strings stay in tune.
On most electric guitars the strings are either secured at the bridge end by an independent tailpiece (just like most Gibson guitars), or passed through the body of the instrument from the back into an all-in-one bridge unit (just like most fender style guitars)
At one end of every steel string, you will find a tiny disc of metal around which one end of the string is wrapped. This is known as the ball end.
Take the opposite end of the string and thread it through the fixture at the bridge.
Pull the string through until the ball end stops you from pulling the string any more.
The majority of electric and steel-string guitars make use of a similar system for securing strings at the machine head. The capstan to which the string is attached stands out vertically from the headstock. Strings can be passed through a hole in the side of the capstan.
The end is then passed around and under, trapping it in place when the machine head is tightened. Several capstans have vertical slots instead of holes. To use these, cut the string to length, and insert into the tip of the capstan. Then bend the string to one side and wind it around.
This leaves the string endings nice and clean. Here’s what you do next: Slowly turn the machine head for every string, increasing the tension till the string becomes appropriately tight.
To save yourself time and energy, you can make use of an inexpensive plastic string winder, which merely fits over the machine head permitting you to crank it along much more quickly.
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