Quick Tip: How to Change Guitar Strings
Tutorial Details
- Difficulty: Beginner
- Time: 5 minutes
- Requirements: A guitar, new strings, wire cutters and a tuner
This entry is part 10 of 16 in the Creative Session: All About Playing Guitar Session
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When you break a guitar string or haven’t changed your strings since you bought your guitar two years ago, the process of putting on some new ones can be a scary thought if you’ve never done it before. While you could take your guitar to a local music store to have them do it for you, it can often be a few days before you get your guitar back and it will surely add some extra expense in the process.
In this quick tip I’ll show you how you can change the strings on a standard electric guitar and give you some handy pointers along the way.
You’ll need new strings, wire cutters and a tuner.
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By Anthony Britton
Anthony Britton has been a professional guitarist for 14 years based in London, UK where I also graduated with an Honors degree from the Guitar Institute back in 2001. For the past seven years he has been working for the Hertfordshire County Music Service as a guitar teacher in schools and music colleges covering GCSE, B-Tec, A-Level and Rockschool examinations.
He loves to help people get as much out of music as they can, and he honestly believes that anyone can achieve a certain level of musical proficiency with the right attitude and commitment to practicing.
On the performing end of things he has played the role of rhythm and lead guitarist for numerous covers and originals bands throughout the UK and abroad since his first proper paid 'gig' at the age of 16, and has racked up more gigs than he'd like to admit to. He has also been lucky enough to work on some individual projects, including his role as Musical Director for Patti Boulaye at the Royal Albert Hall, guitarist and co-producer for Jon X (Kevin and Perry Go Large, The Morrighan) and he has also performed the guitar parts on some modest, but very enjoyable film scores.
Ok, but how do you know when to change your guitar strings? I wrote this helpful guide http://guitarbitz.blogspot.com/2010/07/need-new-guitar-strings.html
just a snippet:
Couple of questions to answer:
1) Have you had the same strings on for over 2 months?
2) Are your strings rusty?
3) Are your strings rough?
4) Do your strings sound dull?
5) Had a string break recently?
If you answered yes to any of the above, its probably time to replace your strings.
Because of moisture on your fingers and in the atmosphere, strings corrode and rust over time and their ablility to vibrate diminishes. This not only causes the sound to dull but even worse, the feel of the strings becomes rough and will hurt or even damage your fingers.
Strings can also become brittle from too much vibration, just think of how a paper clip snaps if you twist it too much, the same happens to strings.
If you play a lot, say for 2 hours a day every day, then you should look at changing your guitar strings every month.
If you play less, but still strum most days, the max you should leave them on the guitar would be 2 months.
………………
Read more about when to change your strings at http://guitarbitz.blogspot.com/2010/07/need-new-guitar-strings.html
Great video and great comment, …and do not use wd-40!)
Awesome video! Nice to see a well done tutorial for restringing, especially for guitar’s with those tricky tremolo’s.
Would be good to do a video regarding intonation, It’s not a complicated process but would be a helpful one as I believe that it is always a good idea to re-check the intonation after changing strings, to ensure that the guitar still plays in tune down the fretboard
great video but what name tool in picture below wire cutter