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Restringing An Electric Guitar On Your Own
Obviously, the first things you will need are the proper strings for your guitar. If you don’t know what the right strings are for your guitar, you should probably stop here and take your instrument to the music store, because you don’t know enough of the basics to begin restringing an electric guitar on your own. Now, it would be good to have a string winder, but it is one of those optional things that you can get along without. Next, you will need a set of wire clippers. The last item is a guitar tuner, which is great to have, but not an absolute necessity. You can tune by ear. It should take you about an hour to do this. You will probably get quicker with experience, but for now, give yourself a solid hour. Under no circumstances do you remove all the strings at once. You can harm your guitar if you do this because the neck is built for tension. You can do one or two at a time, but no more than two. There are certain guitar brands that are quite actually held together by their strings. Don’t risk guitar destruction. When restringing an electric guitar, it is good to always start with the same string and move in progression. Let’s begin with the E string. If your guitar has a whammy bar, unlock it. Loosen the string with your winding tool. You want to slacken the string to the point where you can remove the string from the turning post with your hand. Cut off the end of the string with the wire cutters and carefully move the string out of the bridge. Place the new string through the guitar’s bridge, and across the saddle, along the neck, and over the nut. Now, insert the string into the hole in the turning post. Take the slack out of the string by turning the tuner until the string has a solid seat in the nut and over the saddle. Cut off the extra string. Make it a close cut to the tuner. Use your string winder to tighten the string to pitch and check the pitch with your guitar tuner. You just did the first string on your way to restringing your electric guitar, on your own. You are not quite done, however. We want to remove the slightest bit of slack that may remain in the string. To accomplish this, grab the string between your finger and thumb at a point of about half the distance between the nut and bridge. Now, very gently pull the string from the fret board. Tighten this subtle slack out of the string by turning the tuner a little more. Being precise is the real secret to restringing an electric guitar. Tune the string to the correct pitch by using your guitar tuner, again. The pitch will rise and fall as you work along, restringing your electric guitar. This is natural, and you are going to have to tune and retune many times through the process of restringing an electric guitar. Now, you need to repeat what you have just completed, with all of the remaining strings.
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To get started restringing an electric guitar, you will need a few things. A couple of these items are optional, so please take note.