Category: Electric guitar strings

Beginning guitar players experience problems changing electric guitar strings, so to lessen the pain, here’s a guide to the string-changing process. But first you need to give some attention to your strings during their life on the guitar.
On electric guitars, you will find the first three strings are plain wire, and the other strings are wound around a central core. Some strings use nickel-plated wrap wire which gives a great overall sound, but many electric guitar strings use a stainless-steel wrap which gives a bright sound.
To keep the strings fresh for as long as possible, get in the habit of wiping your strings down with a soft, dry cloth. Get the cloth between and behind the strings every day before you put away your guitar, and you’ll be giving them extra life.
After some time you will need to bite the bullet and change your strings because worn out strings are a pain to tune, and sometimes cause dead tone in your guitar playing. Humidity in the air with oil and stuff off your fingers gets to your guitar strings and deadens the sound. As a rule of thumb you should change your electric guitar strings around every two weeks if you’re playing a couple of hours a day.
As you remove each string wipe oil and dirt from the fingerboard.
You will need a pair of small needle nose pliers to cut and bend the strings and a string winder, a little item that will save you a whole lot of time.
Remove and replace one string at a time. Once a new string is on the guitar, tune it. It will go out of tune again, but start on each one right away.
Use the string winder to turn the tuning peg so the sixth string loosens. Use the pliers to cut off the twisted end of the old string and remove it from the tuning peg.
Take out the old string completely paying attention to how your old string comes off so you can do the opposite when putting a new one back on.
Feed the new string through the hole in the body or the tail piece of the guitar. Pull until the ball is anchored in place.
Pull the new string over the bridge and the nut and past the tuning peg. Use your pliers to cut off excess string. There should be enough string to go around the tuning peg a couple of times.
Pull the string through the hole of the tuning peg and wind it, keeping it tight all the while.
Place your string winder above the tuning peg and wind til the string tightens up. Then take off the winder and tune the string.
Repeat the process for all the other strings.
Always wind so the string wraps from the inside of the post out.
Once you have all the strings on the guitar, do a little strumming and pull on the strings and retune them til they stay in tune.
While you are still new to guitar playing set aside a whole afternoon for changing your strings. Pay attention to detail to make sure you are clear about what you have to do and why.

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