How To Restring An Electric Guitar

http://www.gear4music.com/Electric_Guitar/Strings.html

In this basic guitar tutorial, we will talk you through how to restring an electric guitar.

Strings are an important factor in determining the sound and playability of your instrument and knowing how to restring an electric guitar is one of the fundamental skills that any guitarist should learn.

Hello and welcome to Gear4music. I’m Dean from GuitarWorks and today I am going to show you how to restring an electric guitar.
First I will take you through some of the general basics, the appropriate strings and tools, then go through restringing the guitar in stages.

When it comes to strings, there are a few different types, brands and gauges. Today we’re going to be using the Gear4music electric guitar strings. They are a 10 – 46 regular gauge.

We are going to be using a few different tools to help us with the restring process.

1st a string winder, for taking on and off the strings.
2nd a tuner. This is a clip on style, again available from Gear4music.
3rd a set of wire cutters or pliers that you can get from any regular hardware store.
When it comes to electric guitar there are a few different bridges out there. Most commonly on a double cut electric guitar, is a string through the body approach, which we’re going to cover today. There are also other types of bridges, most commonly found on single cut guitars like this one, where the strings go through the back of the tail piece rather than through the body. Everything else is exactly the same.
The 1st process is to detune. We’re going to take our string winder and make sure all the strings are nice and slack.
So, these are nice and slack now, so when we cut them they will be nice and safe.
I am going to cut these strings to make it a little bit easier when taking them through the bridge. If we leave the strings intact they wind and the bent end of the strings sometimes gets caught in the saddles, so we’re going to cut them off so then they will slip through the back of the bridge really nice and easy.

Now I am going to take them off the headstock.

Now I am going to take these old string and push them through the back of the body and pull them out the back.
The new strings come labelled and individually wrapped, so it makes it nice and easy to know which one goes where. We’ve got 6 being the thickest and 1 being the thinnest.
Now with our strings out of the packet, we’re going to unwind them and we are going to feed them through the back of the body, through the corresponding holes. We just need to make sure that the string comes through the middle of the hole of the little saddle, so that it can come through the body and rest over the saddle, like that, nice and tight.
Now we are going to cut the strings to the right length. We’re going to take them up to the headstock and what I like to do is to cut them about an inch and a half, 2 inches past the post that it is going to be through. I am going to cut this one just here.
After we have cut the strings to the right length, it’s time to feed them through the tuning posts. We are going to take our string winder for this.
We’re going to pop the string through, just leaving a little bit sticking out, then we’re going to start winding. Then I am going to finish at the bottom of the post. Since we’ve cut them 1 to 2 inches after the post, this is going to give us about 2 to 3 winds on each post.
I am going to go above the protruding string end first and then I am going to push it down, so it starts to wind underneath. That gives us a little bit of grip at the end and also finishes at the bottom of the tuning post so that the angle over the nut breaks a little bit better, which adds to the tuning stability and a little bit better transition of tone.
Ok, so now that all the strings are in the posts. On this style of guitar there are couple of string retainers that we need to put the strings through. We’re just going to push them underneath there while the strings aren’t so tight.
Now comes to the tuning. We’re going to use this Gear4music headstock tuner.
So we switch our tuner on and play the string that we want to tune. This one wants to be an E. When it gets to E, you need to get it in the middle and it lights up green when it is in tune.
Now that all 6 strings are in tune, I am going to go back and check them. They are new strings, so they will take a little bit of time to bed in and settle down, so you might find that they will slip a little bit on the first tune up. But after a couple of times, it should settle and be nice and stable.

So there you go, a quick demonstration on how to restring an electric guitar.

For more videos subscribe to our YouTube channel:
https://www.youtube.com/user/gear4music1?sub_confirmation=1

Website: http://www.gear4music.com
Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/gear4music
Twitter: http://twitter.com/gear_4_music
Instagram: http://instagram.com/gear4music/
Pinterest: http://uk.pinterest.com/gear4music/