Restringing an electric guitar. Kind of important? YES! Fresh strings are the greatest thing on an electric guitar. Here is a short write up on how to restring an electric guitar. So you just have to ask yourself one question...and it's not - 'Do I feel lucky?'....It's - Do I have a Fender style Bridge or a Gibson style bridge?
At the end of the day, we're just tightening strings around a post but these bridges are certainly different. A sure way to tell is: Do you insert the strings through the backside of the guitar and the strings actually go through the guitar? If yes, this is a Fender style bridge, commonly used on Strats and Tele's. So you'll probably have to take that white rectangular piece of plastic off (and many people leave them off). Basically, if you don't have this kind of setup, you have a Gibson style bridge, which is pretty self-explanatory.
Next step is to get those old nasty strings off of the guitar. But wait! Don't snip them off when they're at full tension. Wood doesn't like that too much. Loosen all the strings so there completely saggy and use whatever means necessary to get them off. Snip them with wire cutters or whatever. Just take them all off and put them in the garbage or some kind of metal recycling system you may have implanted.
This would be a good point to give your fret board a wipe down using a clean dry cloth to remove any gunk. Make sure to dig around each side of the frets, as this is an area prone to gunk buildup.
So, lets get those new strings on, shall we? So, before you take the guitar strings out of the package, you should know they come in a specific order and they come organized in the box so you don't have to guess where the.036 size string goes and nonsense like that. If you jumped the gun on this and strings are out of the package and dangling everywhere, looks like you'll be using your eye to gauge which string goes where! Lesson learned!
So this is the stage where we saddle these suckers up. I suggest putting all the strings through the bridge so all you have to do is grab individual strings and wind them up. So since you have your fresh strings piled up in the same order they came out of the box, just take each string, guide it through the bridge holes and move on to the next until you have all 6 strings dangling from the bridge system.
Now, lets wind 'em up. This is a finicky area and you will get some different opinions on this. I personally use extremely thick gauge strings so the idea of winding up my size 60 string to the tension of an E note is a little bit hard on the neck of the guitar, so it's a good idea for me to evenly disperse the tension of the strings.
So, how about we tighten the strings in this order: D, E, B, G, A, e
But wait! Before you do that there is The most important thing ever that you must remember. We NEED to have several string wraps around those winding posts! Why? Well, this helps keep the guitar in tune. If you can imagine, the more wraps you have, the more solid the connection the string has to the guitar so we run a very minimal chance of string slippage.
Before you tighten the strings, you need to have a certain amount of slack for each string to allow 2-3 wraps around the string post. Your middle finger is good for a few things including a measuring stick for this purpose. Put the string through the winding post. Touch the tip of your middle finger in the middle of the fret board (about 10th fret) and pull the string out of the winding post until it's reached the other end of your middle finger. This is roughly about how much slack you need on the string before you start winding. Wind away! To ensure nice clean wraps, you can guide the string using your hand while your other hand is winding the tuner with that handy string winder you bought!
So how much do you tighten the strings? First, just get them all tightened to the point where they're making clear sounds, or even a bit tighter then that. Once the strings are all making clear sounds. Use your handy dandy tuner to tighten each string up to pitch.
Wow! What a fiasco, you're done! But not quite.. These are brand new steel strings that have never been put at this tension before in there life. They need to stretch out! You can help this process by pulling up on the string at the 12th fret and the bridge of each string, retuning your guitar and repeating this process until it seems the strings are staying in tune.
I hope you found this article helpful. After doing this process many times, it will be a very quick and easy process! By the way, when your strings become discolored, don't sound as good as they used to and get buildup on them - It's time for a change!
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/3935630
Steps to Changing Guitar Strings
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