Seriously, do NOT pay for a Guitar Center guitar setup or any other big box music retail setup, most of the employees don’t seem to know what they are doing, they don’t do anything you cannot easily do yourself, and they charge way too much! The first five years of my music career I was ripped off for hundreds of dollars simply due to my ignorance, and I don’t want that to happen to you. To be fair, I have had better luck (i.e. ripped off for tens, not hundreds, of dollars) with smaller mom and pop type shops, but nevertheless, it’s easy enough to get your guitar cooking on your own while saving your hard-earned dough. Besides, you can impress all your friends with you bitchin’ axe and maybe even charge them a couple bucks to set theirs up to too!
In this post, I’m going to show you how to perform one of the most essential and basic tasks a guitar player should know how to do, and be able to do themselves: quickly and easily change your guitar strings!
From my experience, even if someone can do this on their own they are not comfortable with the process, they’re unsure of the best way to perform some of the steps, and it may take them more than 30 minutes (!) to have their guitar restrung and in tune. What a waste of potential practice time! You do want to get better, right? Do you want your guitar to go from dead and flat sounding, to vibrant and new in less than 6 minutes? Then read on, my young Jedi guitar apprentice…
Fresh strings and some cheap but functional wire cutters
To begin, you will need your guitar, a fresh pack of strings, and some wire-cutters. There’s no need here to buy the fancy $20 multi-guitar Swiss army knife thingamajig you found online or GC, a simple set will suffice. Mine cost $2 at a local hardware shop and I’ve been using the same pair for 8 years now. As a bonus, they fit easily into every case or gig bag I’ve ever owned. As far as strings, make sure you get an appropriate gauge. If you’re more experienced you probably know what you like already, but for the novice player I wouldn’t recommend anything heavier than 10-46 gauge set, probably even going with a 9-42 gauge set to begin with. Brand names aren’t a huge deal; I like Ernie Balls myself as they’re cheap and reliable. My personal string gauges are 12-56 which I don’t recommend unless you’ve been playing for years, have strong hands, and can properly set up your guitar. Thicker strings like this require adjusting the truss rod, the action, and in my case filing out the nut slots to fit the strings. I’ll discuss these topics later, but for now we’re just changing some strings.
Now that you have your equipment ready, we’re going to proceed to replace one string at a time. This ensures that we keep proper tension on the neck (we’ll talk about truss rods in another post) and it prevents the bridge from wiggling around or falling off your guitar. If that happens, it’s easy to fix, but we’re shooting for fast, efficient string changes here so we don’t want that to happen.
Demonstrating how to begin removing your 6th string
Here you can see Option (b). Make sure there is enough slack in the string so it doesn't snap and hit anything!
Here you can see Option (a) wherein you simply continue to loosen the string until you can easily pull it out of the tuner
Step One – We’ll start by removing the 6thstring (the lowest pitched and thickest string on the guitar). Grasp the tuner and rotate it so the string loses tension. Regardless of your headstock style, rotating the tuner clockwise should decrease tension and counterclockwise should increase tension. The point of this step is to either (a) unwind the string entirely from the tuning peg and simply pull it out, or (b) the quicker option of creating enough slack in the string so that you can cut it with your wire cutters without it popping you in the face.
Option (b) is recommended for 60 second or less string changes, as it should only require you to turn the tuning peg a few times. If you go for option (a), unwind the string until you can easily pull it out of the tuning peg, and then pull the string through the bridge to remove it from your guitar. Option (b) results in half of the string needing to be pulled off of the tuner, and the other half must be slid through the bridge.
Step Two – Now that you have gotten rid of the old string, you need to remove the new string from its packaging. Be careful doing this, as any accidental bends or kinks in the string will cause buzzing that will only be eliminated by a new, non-kinked string.
You can see the hole in the tuner lined up with the nut slot
Step Three – With the new string free from its plastic or paper home and carefully unwound, rotate the tuning peg so that the hole in the tuner lines up the nut slot. This will make it easier to install the new string quickly and efficiently.
(Optional step) Before you start putting the new string on your guitar, you can take a sharpened #2 pencil and gently rub some of the graphite into the nut slot (i.e. color it in). This will lubricate the nut and increase tuning stability. Some people even rub a pencil over the bridge saddles as well. Many products are available for this purpose, but I’m trying to save you money and a pencil works so well that many professional musicians and guitar techs prefer it over fancy schmancy chemical products. Make sure to not leave any chunks of graphite in the nut as this will also cause annoying buzzing sounds to emanate from your instrument.
Step Four – Now, pass the new string through the tailpiece of your guitar. The ball end of the string should fit snugly in the tailpiece and hold the string in place. DO NOT cut the ball end of the string off! Doing so is necessary for certain types of tremolo systems, but we’re not discussing those today. With the ball end firmly in the bridge and the hole in the tuning peg lined up with the nut slot, you should be able to effortlessly insert the end of the new string through the tuning peg.
Here you see the neck hand pull the string back through the tuning peg, creating the perfect amount of slack for string winding. The neck hand is now in line with the second fret.
Here you can see the neck hand grasping the string, in line with the first fret.
Step Five – Alright, we’re on to winding the string around the tuning peg. This next bit is where I’ve seen countless people including music store employees mess things up. There are right ways and wrong ways to do this, and while the wrong ways will work, they are sub-optimal and reduce string life and tuning stability, and that is unacceptable for something that is so easy to do correctly. This is not a hard step, but people mess it up anyway. Pay attention and you’ll be a pro (or better) in no time. The real pros shoot for two to three winds of string around the tuning post for optimal tuning stability, and I’m going to show you an easy way to get this to happen every time. Grasp the tail end of the string you just inserted through the tuner with one hand (we’ll call it the “tail end hand”), and grasp the length of string between the nut and bridge with the other hand (this hand should be hovering over the neck of the guitar, so I’ll refer to it as the “neck hand”). Pull the string taut with the tail end hand, not too firmly but the string should be straight and have some tension on it. Line up the neck hand with a fret, ideally the first or second fret. Use the neck hand to pull the string back through the tuning peg for a distance approximately equal to one fret distance (the distance between frets). So if your neck hand is lined up with the first fret, pull enough slack through so that it is now lined up with the second fret.
By starting the winding process going over the tail end, and then ensuring subsequent wraps go under the tail end, you can see the string gets locked into the tuner
Using the slack so the first wrap goes over the tail end section of the string. Make sure to wrap over the tuning peg in the correct direction
Got it? Great! You now have the perfect amount of slack in the string for optimal winding! Take your tail end hand and put a bend in the string flush with the tuning peg so it won’t pull back through once you begin wrapping the string. Now take your neck hand and wrap the slack you have in the string OVER the tuning peg so it sits on top of the tail end of the string. This will help the string lock in and increase tuning stability. For 3 per side headstocks make sure the neck hand end of the string is now on the side of the tuning peg toward the center of the headstock, and for 6 per side headstocks you want all of the strings to be on the same side of the tuning machines. An easy way to check if you have this correct is by rotating the tuning machine a half-turn counterclockwise. If this increases tension on the string, you’ve got it made. Once you have done this, bend the tail end of the string up at a 90 degree angle away from the guitar and begin rotating the tuning machine to tighten the string. All of the wraps around the tuning peg EXCEPT for the FIRST one should proceed downward on the tuning peg, that is to say after the initial wrap OVER the tail end of the string, every following wrap should be UNDER the tail end of the string.
This is how your string should look once it has been tightened properly and the excess tail end of the string has been snipped off.
THAT’S IT! Congratulations, you’ve just accomplished something thousands upon thousands of musicians haven’t yet figured out how to do and saved yourself some money in the process! Continue tightening the string until it’s in tune, cut off the excess tail end of the string, and then repeat these steps for the rest of the strings. Now you’re ready to rock! If you memorize these steps and follow them every time, you’ll be done changing your strings in the time it takes most guitarists to tune their instrument! 60 second string changes here I come!
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