Stringing An Acoustic Guitar

Jim here from learnfingerstyleguitar.com. Today we are going to take a look at how to go about stringing an acoustic guitar. It is not too tough. You have to just need a little practice and you will begin like pro in no time. Let's take a look at the tools that you are going to need. Tools that we will need for changing our guitar strings are obviously strings, the combination bridge pin puller, string winder, five cutters or some kind of pliers to cut off the excess of its stock, and something to tune with, a pitch pipe, tuning fork like tronic tuner, something to get guitar back into tune with. We will begin by removing the old strings, for that you want to use your handy-dandy string winder bridge pin puller, okay and just you just put it on the string and begin to rotate the string clockwise. Having one these will really help to speed up the process rather than twisting and binding with your fingers. And also having bridge pin puller really helps, again you drop it on top of your guitar; you haven't done the damage that you would if you were using a pair of pliers. So you remove the old strings, okay. Then come down to this end of guitar and you slip the notch in your bridge pin puller under the bridge pin, tilt it back and the pin comes out. Let's give it another pull there, there we are. Okay, then you are going to take your new strings and you want to double check on the package that you have gotten the right string, the pin on the rear will realize you have put the wrong one on there, happened to most of this sort of things, at least some of it. So you are going to take the ball end which is this metal loop here, and you are going to put it through the bridge. Then you will take your bridge pin which has a slot in the front of it and you are going to push that into the hole and the bridge. You want the slot in the front to be at the forward of the sound hole because the string needs to fit in here. And take your string, hold your bridge pin in place, pull up until you feel snug. Push down with your bridge pin, you do not want to cram it in there but it is a friction fit, so it will need some pressure to fit. The ball end of the string now is going to lodge between the end or the side of the bridge pin and the bridge plate. The bridge plate say is a wooden plate on the inside of the top in this area that reinforces the top because of the string tension on the bridge, it's usually maple. And that ball end is going to wedge in there, okay. Now you are ready to put it through the tuning post. But you need to leave some slacks to do that; it needs only three to four inches of slack. The way that I would do that and this seems to work pretty good for most people is I am going it across my palm, my palm is about three and a half inches large here. Now I want to cross my palm and hold it in place like that, okay. Then I am going to take the free end of the string and I am going to run it through the hole on the post, and I like to have the post run along in this direction with a neck rather than a cause. Some people do it the other way but I prefer this way and I will show you why. Now that you got the string through here, you want to take the end that comes out far side of the post and bend it, end towards the center of the headstock; okay you kind of cramp it. Then you are going take that free end and run it under the string and you are going to cramp it again, you are going it bend it over. What you have done is made kind of a half loop on here. Now when you begin to wind your string up that half loop is pinned against the side of the post not the rest of the string and that locks them in place. So you begin to wind up the tension, take the tension out of string by winding it up. You don't want to -- that will be a speed raiser to get a round up, you want to just crank it up there. All the time maintaining your pressure here so that you can control how it goes on post because it needs to go on the post from the top to the bottom. Okay and you only want to end up with three to four stacks around the post there, okay. You don't want to end up with big part of it. It makes it harder to tune like that. So you maintain your pressure on the string and to -- then the string run through the post, okay. Think I have gotten three times there, then check your tuning and you bring it up to pitch, at least you are in about hard pitch. We will fine tune it a little later. Now that you have gotten that done, you want to put your finger under the string and gently pull up on it and you are going to run at the length, or at least a good portion of the length of the string. What this does is it helps to stretch the metal because the metal can stretch a little bit. But also make sure that the string has seeded securely in the bridge by the bridge pin and in here at the post on the tuner. And you want to probably do that step a lot of times to bring it up to pitch and to make sure it's seeded and get all of the stretching out of it. And retune each time between then you are going to take your handy-dandy side cutters and cut off the excess. Now if you do not have side cutters handy and a pinch, you can let go the string back and forth and it will eventually break off or some people like to loop them up. It's sloppy looking to me but we all have our own different taste. But that's basically how to change the string. So you have seen stringing an acoustic guitar is pretty easy to do. I hope you will do it. I hope this has helped you. Hope you will do it also to keep your guitar sounding good. I will see you next time.