Welcome to guitarlessons.com I'm Nate Savage and in this lesson we’re going to learn something that every guitar player needs to know and that’s how to change your strings on your electric guitar. Now the first thing we’re going to really think about is how can you tell when your strings needs to be changed. There's two ways that you can really tell when your strings needs to be changed. One is by looking at them and just saying they're all nasty and dirty and rusted. And the second way probably the most important way you can tell is how they sound. If they sound nice and bright, they're probably good to go. But if they sound kind of faddy and dull, then it’s time to change your strings.
Again, a lot of people in the music store that I worked at coming in and saying I broke a string will you change my strings for me and I ask them how long have you been playing? Six months to a year, well you don’t know how to change your strings. That’s pretty amazing. So don’t let that person be you. Watch this video, learn how to change your strings and you’ll be good to go.
I have a set of D’Addario EXL 110 strings, 10 gauge D’Addario strings and I really love these strings because they really ever break and they're color coded so you never have to guess about what string you're putting on your second string or fifth string or whatever.
So the second thing I have is just a regular string winder, that will make my life a lot easier when I'm changing all six strings I don’t have to crank until I die with my lesson. So let’s start off by taking the high E string off with our string winder. Start to put your string winder on there and start cranking depending on what kind of guitar you have that will kind of dictate which side of the head that your tuning peg is on. Once you have it pretty loose, you can probably just pull it off like that you’ll be fine.
Now on this guitar, the string is loaded from the back so what I'm going to have to do is I'm going to have to push the string through, grab it, and yank it out.
Put the older one to the side and grab the new set, pull them out. If you have a set of D’Addario’s the silver ball, the silver ended ball are here if you can see that is always your high E string. So I'm going to flip the guitar over and feed the string, the new string to my high E string hole. Pull it out the front until it catches for my guitar right here. I actually mentioned that you may have a bridge like this where it loads to the back, most vendor staff do that, but you also may have one that loads to the top, don’t let that fear you off. It’s the same idea, you just may have to throw it in to the top side which is I think, is a little bit easier.
So, take your string pull it down to your tuning peg, it’s empty and ready for the string, and you want to leave about enough slack for about two or three wraps around the post. So what I like to do is take that slack and just start winding it first to crank the last. If you have a string tree like this one, it will make sure it goes under that string tree. Take your string winder, start cranking, now it’s good to make sure that when the string comes around to this, loosen the string that comes across the part where you're winding it that you have a couple of wraps over the string like we did in the beginning when I wrapped it around and a couple of winds underneath to loosen this string. So the string kind of gets in a bind and it won’t slip when you're tuning up or playing or bending.
Now, I'm just going to get it close to being in tuned to get some tension on it. I'm not going to worry about tuning it yet, I'm just going to go all the strings changed and get the fresh ones on there. So let’s go to the D string, loosen that one a bit, get off, work through, second color is a purple one, can you see that from there? Be careful, sometimes when you wind them, they tend to pop open you don’t want to hurt your eye and stick on your hand. Take the new string and put it back through the second hole there. Pull to the top, stick it through the second opening on the whole of the second post. Again leave about enough slack for about three wraps, initial wrap goes on top. I want you to get the winder ready and all the subsequent wraps go underneath the loose end of the string.
Again, if you have a string tree, make sure you go under right here, finish cranking. Go to the second string, next one our G string, let’s go wind it, put up the other side—that’s a good teaching lesson, it just popped out and that’s something you want to be careful, they’re not really glued in there very well. So a lot of people loose it, so if you loose one, you then have to buy a whole new set so be careful when you're changing the strings on a guitar like this. Take your third string [Demonstration]. And one thing I want to mention to you right here is whatever guitar you have, make sure when you're putting the new string on to whatever side of the post that it wraps around. Make sure you wrap it around the same way.
So if you have this guitar right here see how all those strings come up on the right side of the post. I think people come in where the string wrapped around the wrong way like this wrapped around the left side. Always make sure you put it on the same way that you took it off [Demonstration].
Okay, once your done getting your new strings on it’s time to flip your string so you don’t poke yourself. The string winder have a little flipper and I love these because you always have the flipper to go with it. You don’t have to carry two things out. So just get close this hand to the post, the tuning post, put that off, do the same thing for the rest of them [Demonstration].
So we’re done changing our strings on our electric guitar. Now it’s your turn to go out and buy probably two packs of D’Addario stings because just in case you break one or something goes wrong with that pack, you won’t have to go all the way back to the music store and buy another package. So go ahead and try to change your own string on your own guitar.
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