How To Restring An Acoustic Guitar Properly

today I'm going to be showing you how to change the strings on your acoustic guitar and this will apply to almost all acoustic guitars you're going to need a set of strings obviously and then some things that will help a string winder wire cutters small pliers some cleaner a tuner is nice you don't need the tools but they help the job go a lot easier so before we get started let me just say something real quick I met so many people that maybe haven't restrung their guitar very much or they're new and they're they're scared to touch their guitar they're scared to turn those pegs and work on the guitar they don't know how to restring something and it's just a frightening experience let me tell you that it's just a normal thing anybody can do it you can learn how to do it you can get better at it you're not going to ruin your instrument you know worst case scenario you do something wrong and you have to buy a new set of strings or you break a string or or something like that it's really no big deal I just see so many people that are a little too afraid to work on their instrument and that's one of the reasons why I'm posting this video is to show you how but also give you confidence you can do it I'm a normal person there are plenty of other normal people out there that that know how to restring guitar just takes a little bit of practice so I just want to encourage you to feel free to work on your own guitar and restring it and and learn your instrument the first thing you're going to want to do is take off the old string so I'm going to use a string winder if you don't have one you can just manually do it with your hand since I have one I'm going to use it so just loosen all the strings now it is worth pointing out that before you loosen your strings if you've got a pickup under your saddle a Paizo cup specifically that you may not want to loosen all the strings at once reason for that is because Paizo pickups are very sensitive to string pressure on them the balance can get really messed up meaning that your treble side your bass I could be louder or softer than the other and so once the balance is set it can be kind of temperamental and hard to get back in a good place so if that's the case and you pick up under there and you don't really want to mess around with it just leave your outside strings up detention or just change one string at a time so instead of taking them all off just change one and then go to the next one and so on and so forth before loosening all the strings this guitar doesn't have a pickup in it so I'm not concerned about the balance of the pickup so I'm just going to take them all off now at this point things can get a little tricky to be able to pull the rest of the string out we got to pull out this pin that's holding it into place and a lot of times the fit is very tight so you won't be able to pull it out by your fingers and so my solution there are a couple different ways you can do that you can get your small little pair of pliers you can grab the pin and pull it straight up you know and that'll work you want to be careful if your if your pliers have these little teeth in them you can end up marring your plastic pins and it might not be a good idea if you have bone pins because you could chip them out so if you're concerned about that we can also use our wire cutters kind of getting around it and then use it as kind of like a lever and pull the pin up that way that still weirds you out here's a something I used to do a lot you just grab any kind of coin or just any hard thing I guess I've got a 25 cent corner here you just put it up underneath it and you can use your fingers to feel where the end of those pins are sticking down find it use the the coin to help you push from the bottom if you push up the other the pin pops out right there do the other one see so that works pretty well another little tip here for you is that sometimes your pins are different sizes or your holes may be drilled at different sizes and if you put the wrong one in the hole it may stick out a little farther it's generally not a big deal but if you're concerned about that you want to keep things how they were just when you take your pins out organize them where they work so this was my low string you know - my high string now this is a good part of the process where you can start cleaning your tar if you want to I've met a bunch of people that like to have that funkiness that DNA that's sweat all over their guitar because it shows what the guitar has been through and they're playing you know that's fine but I'm not like that so just take a cloth and clean it off there usually be a lot of dust right here where the strings are also up here the headstock you know where the strings sit clean enough if you want to I'll do another video I think about how to thoroughly clean your guitar but for me just change your strings that is good enough so now we can actually start restraining the tar take your strings open up the packaging d'addario tends to come in these sealed bags some of them are packaged individually now how do you know which string to put on well let's use some common sense your lowest in pitch string is on what I call the bottom down here some people call it at the top I think they're crazy so we want to find our thickest string a lot of times they'll be labeled either just look at your packaging I happen to know that d'addario uses these colored see if we can get that to focus these colored pins or low-end things so the brass one is my low E and then the red one is my a but just look for your packaging and it will tell you which string to use where you don't want to get it mixed up that's kind of important so let me explain what happens inside the guitar when you put the strings in I think this is useful information so this is our ball end the other end of the string this is our pin there's a little groove a slot in in this and you want this facing towards the headstock so that the string has a place to be so the string is kind of going to follow that channel now you don't really want it to look like this inside the guitar that's kind of how you have to put it in but usually what will happen is the string will give way and come up so there will be like the top of the guitar will be like somewhere around here and what you want it to look like is the ball and to kind of look like that with the string going up through that channel and you know a little bit of sorry about the focus a little about this pin sticking out that's going to make the the ball push up against the bridge plate which is just a piece of wood underneath the top right here that way it's going to be the most secure if you have it like this the when you're playing or tuning or whatever the the string will go Boop and then you'll you'll be out of tune and it's just kind of a weird thing now it's hard to explain what that feels like when you're restoring guitar you just kind of stick the string in there you put this pin down in there and you'll feel the string kind of give way until it catches not a huge deal but that'll that'll help you it'll save you some time I just wanted to explain that in case you're kind of wondering so here we go I've got the ball end of the string over here I got my pin right here with the slot facing that way if it has a slot I'm going to put the ball end in stick in the pin and while holding kind of the string in place I just want to push down on the pin till it bottoms out and then the string stayed in place I can tug on it you know it feels good and solid so that's that in taken care of alright let's get down to why you're actually watching this video what kind of knot do I use to attach this end of the string to this tuner now let me tell you there's going to be a million different views out there what kind of knot to use how much slack to use all that kind of stuff I'm just going to show you what I do I'll show you actually two different ways there's a lot of different ways to do it and they work and I've tried most of them and it's fine but there's one way I like to do it particularly and it holds in place it's secure it tunes well and I'll show you that I'm a professional guitar tech out on the road so tuning is kind of what I do I have to make sure these things hold and so I'll show you the method that works really well for so the first thing you want to do is you want to make sure that the hole in the poster here there's a hole that goes all the way through is lined up with the string so we want it facing this way so we can just feed the string easier so take this end feed it through the hole and pull it all the way through now you just don't want to start tightening like this we want to give us some slack so the method I like to do is I actually don't really think about it too much if I turn this around I kind of hold I see how much slack is there about I guess the the thickness of my hand so sometimes all I'm holding this other end with my left hand so I'll gauge how much slack you know something about like that another way to gauge that is by doing that and pulling through and kind of seeing how much like that was so you can use this next tuner as an indication so right now the strings taut ish and I'm going to kind of put I want this much slack so I'll move it back see I going from top to where that tuner is and that gives me about the same amount of slack here with my right hand so once I've got that proper amount of slack there I'm going to just keep the string right here so it doesn't move so I still am playing with the right amount slack now this method I use actually creates a knot so it's going to be different depending on which side of the headstock you're on it's going to be opposite so starting here on the base side I'm going to take my slack right here I'm going to go ought to think of it towards the inside of the headstock so if I'm on this outside the inside the headstock will be that direction if I'm on this side the inside of the headstock would be that direction anyway so like I said inside of the headstock in this case I'm going like this so I want to go underneath this portion so this tail end needs to go around the post and underneath this string right here okay so you see that I'm going underneath now you want to make sure it's tight so while holding this in place and not letting the string slip through that post any I'm going to pull it tight like that okay now once I've got it all the way under this string and tight I'm going to put a little bend in the string by going straight up like that okay so now I can kind of let go and it's it's bent kind of where I want it to be so now we need to tighten down the string now there is a I'm not sure if it's a reason why it's a standard way but there is the normal way when you tightening a string would be taking it you know from this perspective taking the tuner and rotating it that direction I guess technically that would look like it's lefty loosey even though it's tightening the string but that's the correct way to do it and you'll know if you've done it correctly if the if the string is going towards that side of this post again assuming we're just talking about this line of tuners so what that looks like okay so I hold it this string with my right hand kind of put my index finger on that tail in so it doesn't move around I'm going to get my string winder you can do it by hand if you want but I've got the string winder so I'm going to start turning it in that tightening direction which looks like it's loosening so now what's happening is let me let me do a little bit to do it by hand so you can see how that part that I pulled up is going to get sandwiched by this as I tighten so let me do a little bit more here okay so you see what's going on there so as I tighten this this part of the string is sandwiching this part that went up so I keep going we'll swap to the winder okay and as I go around this portion needs to kind of stay below the windings you could have it keep kind of creeping up on the windings but that's not the best way to do it you want it to go underneath those coils so we'll continue tuning it up and make sure you get it in the nut slot and just kind of get it so that there's a note doesn't have to be tuned up perfectly so let me give you a close-up of what that looks like okay so this is what's talking about the string is on that side of this post and we tightened it by turning the peg that way okay so let's do this whole thing again I've already got the other end of this string this will be the a string in to the bridge on that other end I got my hole in the post right here lined up going that way this end through the hole all the way through I'm going to pull it taut so I know how much slack to give it I'm going to pull it back about this much okay use my finger is a stop I've got the right amount of slack right here keep it from sliding through I'm going to take this end the tail end go towards the inside of the headstock which is that direction okay it's going to go underneath the playing part of the string right here I'm going to pull it tight once it's tight I'm going to leave it straight up so there's a little bend in it now while using my right hand to keep that Bend from getting weird take my string winder start turning what looks like to the left but we're tightening it and as I do that I'm going to push down on this so that I'm underneath the subsequent windings just going to keep going make sure it's in the slot tune up to any kind of pitch so there's tension on I will tune the guitar later so now let's take care of these pesky ends right here if you don't have a wire cutter what I used to do just when I was you know a kid I wind them up I do that so they don't get in the way but it's a pain so let's cut it you know and invest in some good wire cutters or just some normal and you know these are pretty heavy-duty I use them all the time they work on bass strings as well you know so we want to clip it but we don't want to make it sharp so that we're going to destroy our fingers if our hand brushed over this which can be a problem a lot of time so remember our string is going straight up I'm going to take my clippers this is the the flat end and I'm going to move it over here and it's not a very good angle but I'm just going to clip it okay so now what doing that does we'll get a closer angel' here as you can see focus so that was the the end that we cut off and if we look at it from the side see how it doesn't stick above the post so I can do this all day and I'm not going to destroy my finger you know if you leave it a little high you can totally stab yourself and I've done it many times I've bled a lot from doing that but if you cut it really close to the post right here underneath the top of it you shouldn't have any problems here's another look at what that knot looks like you can see what I was talking about how the string gets sandwiched in between the winding and the post you know right there so there is literally no way that this is going to loosen on me because it's held against the post by the winding it creates that little knot right there that's the reason why I like doing it this way there are other ways to do it and they seem to hold okay but once in a blue moon I've had the other ways loosened on me especially on the the trouble side you may disagree with that but that's been my experience and like I said when I'm straining up a guitar for a guy to play in front of thousands of people that's the last thing I want to happen so that's the reason why I do it this way and have that knot there it does make pulling off the strings a little bit more of a pain but in the long run I think that's worth it for me I'll show you this other other method in just a second so this other method more or less start off the same so feed my string through okay pull it taut same as before it's really the same amount of slack so if you want to gauge it this way about that much stick it through okay that's good enough now this other method is you just simply hold the string in place you don't do that not thing I was talking about and you just start winding I don't prefer to do it this way but just for to show you guys that you know it does work I don't mind doing it this is my guitar that I just play around with so we just start turning you get it begin to it the same way you want to hold hold this in the slack so you it holds in place and as you turn turn the peg it's going to naturally make that that bend in the string that I did by hand before so again we want this end to go over or this end to go underneath the windings okay so we just kind of hold it down to place we keep winding it up all well and fine make sure it's through the nut slot correctly okay now we've got no tension on it there will be a little bit of difference in how we clip the end this time though so instead of the string sticking straight up focus it's sticking out the side that's fine we'll just use our Clippers again and I just tend to to go pretty pretty close to the end I don't like about this method is now you run the risk of stabbing yourself you can take your your um pliers and move that down or up or whatever it's just kind of more work but that's that's how this method works it pretty much is the same if they work okay I just don't prefer it I will say that this method I think is probably more common to pick up a guitar at a store or whatever your friends it's probably going to look a little bit like this I think that's because it's easier it's easier to understand but like I said I don't prefer it for the reasons I stated before if you want to do this way that's totally fine the great thing about music is that you can kind of do things however you want to do it and as long as it works for you that's great but I think I made a case for why that method is a more secure way to tie the knot okay so now what about our treble side this side o tuners this is going to be backwards you can't do it the same way because the string will end up being on the opposite side you'll turn it the wrong way but it's the same thing just backwards so here we go feeding the thing through there I'm going to go back to my preferred method right now so the string is tight I'm going to give it some slack again about this much okay now instead of going that direction like we did before we want to move this direction so that's why I called it the inside of the headstock so we're on this side now we're going to move this slack end to the inside of the headstock and underneath this string so here we go inside the head stock underneath this string we're going to pull it tight okay once it's tight we're going to bend it so there's a bend going straight up now at this point I change hands from what I was doing before so I'm going to use my winder in my right hand instead of my left like before now the direction we're going to turn this this time is my hand out of the way is this direction okay so from our perspective the players perspective it's going to be clockwise or if this was was counter depends on how you want to think about it like most things in life so we're going to turn this what appears to be clockwise from our perspective same rules apply just want to keep going I know it's not the best angle maybe a little better as we go we're going to move this underneath the windings keep going make sure that's in the nut slot keep going until we have a note okay so now that's tight ish I'm going to clip it again with my Clippers I get as close to the bottom as I can like that okay I'm not going to stab myself because I used that method so same same but different just opposite let me show you the reason why we want our windings to go underneath I'm the type of person that I just don't like being told what to do I want to know why okay so it will depend greatly on guitar now this guitar doesn't really matter so much the reason is because this headstock is at an angle to the fingerboard so our fingerboard follows this my straight curve and then here at the headstock it goes bloop it goes down like that we call that break angle so that's the angle from going straight right here to down Gibson's this Yamaha tend to be guitars that have three tuners on on each side they're going to tend to have this type of break angle so it's not as big a deal we want a break angle reason is because we want to make sure that the string is making a note or you know hitting this front edge of the nut if you can imagine that if this end or up like this or maybe even just kind of flat across there wouldn't be a lot of force on this nut to make sure we have a nice clean note so that's why it's important to have this this downward angle so the reason why we put the string underneath is it increases that angle like I said on this guitar not a huge deal but on fenders or those types of guitars where the the headstock is pretty straight across you want to make sure you wind things down and especially on like on a strata or tele or something like that the D and the G I will tend to put a lot more slack on the D and the G too to get those to go down farther I'll do probably another video at some point showing what I mean by that that's also why fenders have string trees the little thing that string goes underneath and then goes to the tuner to create that and break angle wait I just wanted to explain that we want that break angle so let's do this one more time in real time just you know so I'm turning this until the whole it's going that way we're going to take this end of the string put it through the hole all the way pull it tight give it some slack so yeah about that much again holding with my right hand now again since we're on the treble side we're going to take the non-playing end of it and go inside the headstock so this direction this time underneath the rest of the string okay pull it tight give it a bend by pulling it straight up I'm going to switch hands going to hold this in place with my left hand take the string winder with my right hand turn it in this direction make sure that as I'm turning it I'm pushing oops that's why pushing down on the string so that as I wind it we're creating the lines going down there goes in the nut slot keep going until we have a note excellent take our Clippers being careful not to clip the other string click that one so I don't stab myself and it's it's really that easy so now I've got the guitar all strung up but it obviously is not in tune okay so grab a tuner I've got this one if you wanna use a headstock or if you've got a pickup plug in whatever I'll do a separate video on how to ask your tune your guitar that's just kind of roughly in place now tunings a whole kind of other thing but the last thing we kind of want to do well maybe not the last thing we're going to make sure that our pins are still seated down this guitar is pretty good about this thing depending on your acoustic guitar as you tighten the string and bring it up to tension this pin will start to creep up okay not a big deal you just want to make sure you push it right back down okay so as you tune it just look back here and if they're sticking up crazy amounts just you know just push it back down with your finger so congratulations you restrung your guitar we're almost done it's pretty much ready to play I'll show you one extra step that I like to do I don't see other people talk about and maybe I'm crazy but this again is my experience so when you restring something see their strings are going over our saddle right there because it's a new string see how it kind of curves up like that what I like to do is take the string and push it down a little bit so instead of at this point right here it still can't continue it's curved up that way it has a nice place where it starts to go straight I don't do that just for no reason I in my experience I've found that the intonation of a guitar and what that means is you maybe your strings in tune but as you play a chord the things or where you where you fret things aren't as in tune but that the intonation of a guitar tends to be a little out unless I do this down there and I'll kind of do the same thing at the nut just kind of put a little pressure right there so that instead of the string following like a curve because a string you know has it kind of wants to stay at a certain tension or a certain straightness but if I add a little bit of a bend right there it tends to sound more in tune you don't want to like put a big kink in this string you know a big bend or whatever but that's just something I found that works well for me so try that if you want and really the last step I'll do is I'll stretch the strings that's not something probably the average you know hobbyist will do but you know that when you put new strings on a guitar you tune it up you play something and it just tends to keep creep and flat and go out of tune so to keep that from happening I just you know I'll work the strings you don't pull on them tug on them and obviously keep tuning it until it holds in place I'll do probably another video on that too because that's a important thing but I hope I hope this was helpful to you I'm sure there are other videos out there on how to restring your guitar but I hope I gave you some other information that maybe wasn't out there and and you feel confident to go and restrain your instrument

Channel: FixTheThings

Views: 1,666,770

Keywords: Acoustic, Guitar, Electric, Restring, Re-string, Change, String, Strings, Nut, Saddle, Bridge, Tune, Tuner, Knot, Winding, Tech, Pickup, Best

Id: QmzNnzu1zLI

Length: 29min 49sec (1789 seconds)

Published: Tue Nov 22 2016