Welcome back to the channel in this video we're going to be looking at
restringing a guitar with vintage tuners, this is my road worn 50's Stratocaster
during the video as well as the stringing we're also going to be looking
at a D'Daddario fret polishing kit we're going to be looking at lubricating the
nuts and some general maintenance as well so thanks for sticking around... okay
let's have a look at what tools we'll need we're going to obviously need some
guitar strings I'm using d'addario XL 10/46's we need a microfiber cloth to
clean the guitar when we've got the strings off and the d'addario fret polishing
system other fret polishing systems are available and some wire cutters as well
to cut the strings, strange actually I was reading on a forum today or on
Instagram or something somebody said why would you clean a road worn or Relic
guitar haha cheeky sod they get dusty as well, so we're gonna remove the strings
first of all, look at speed of those hands who needs a guitar winder right... and then
we're going to cut the strings because what I don't like to do is the little
twisty bit at the end of the string.... i don't like to drag that through the body
of the guitar this is this is strung through body on this one
...on this one on every stratocaster i think
then we're just gonna pull the strings through, for some reason that's therapeutic
i don't know why, what I'm doing just off-camera is rolling the
strings up into a ball and then putting them back in the packet because
d'addario have a string recycling system... so this is the fret
polishing kit on one side it's smooth the other side it's not so smooth it's
not rough it's not like sandpaper or anything so it's not actually gonna take
anything off of the frets just the grime and you get this nice
polishing template, I'm gonna be using the Jumbo slot because the frets on this
guitar are jumbo frets and all you need to do is just rub lightly, it does look
like I'm really hammering down there but it's the surface that I'm on
so the first fret you can see in the picture is nicely polished second fret
is yet to be done and I'll show you the cloth here, and all it's doing is just
taking the grime off as I so it's not taking any of the fret material off and
once we're done we just go over it with a microfiber cloth just to get a little
cleaning up, it's easy to clean between the pickups when you've got the strings
off anyway
I always find the best pencil to use when you're lubricating the nut because
we're going to lubricate the nut with graphite, is this little craft pencil
because it's got a fine point on it, the reason we're doing this, you may know this
already is to reduce string slip through the nut because when you've got brand
new strings and you string up the guitar sometimes when you're tuning the string
will jump through the nut or slip through the nut and what this does is
reduce that also if you're going from 9's to 10's or 11s for example and
your nut isn't cut for those particular strings this can help reduce that as
well, also when you're bending the string
okay let's restring it as I say I'm using d'addario 10/46 XL's my string
of choice, on the packet you get a little key and on the key there it gives you
the color for the string that you need and one mistake I made once was just
ripping open the packet and it was my last set of strings and it
destroyed the key so I have to go online to have a look at the key I know it's
not too difficult but when you get down to the D G B strings they
can look the same size anyway don't make that mistake
ordinarily I would do these one at a time okay through the back of the guitar
it's sometimes fiddly through a six saddle bridge but that one okay normally
I do them one at a time
but I'm gonna put all six through I'm gonna go in the video to drag on too
long
okay we're gonna do is align all the tuners up just makes it easier when
restringing
the speed of their hand who needs a guitar winder (did i make that joke already?)
so what we're going to do is rest the
string through the tuner and count three tuners up and then cut the string there
you can go two tuners up I've seen people do that as well this is just my
preference I do three it just gives me a little bit extra and then poke that
string down as far as it'll go bend it down with your finger and then you want
to put some pressure on it as you start winding the string round that tuner
we're going to do exactly the same thing with the rest of the strings just count
three away from the original one
poke that down as far as it'll go and it over and just keep the tension there as
you wind the string round now this methods gonna work perfectly until you
get to the fourth tuner in which case what I do is then just when I say bend
the string around I don't mean put a kink in it I don't like to put a kink in
the string so I'll show you that in just a second, thats' trapped in the string tree
get out... so on this string because we want to go three up three from the
original I'll go one up end around and then go to back but I don't know put a
kink in the string so I'm just gonna but a wide arc on it so that I don't bend it
when you get to these thinner strings there's sometimes a little bit of a pain
this one was a little bit of a pain for some reason and the high a that was a
bit of a pain you'll see they're in the same kept jumping out so then I put my
thumb on it to just give it more tension
okay wonderful that's all done let's move on to tuning so what we need to do
now is obviously tune the guitar and we may need to do this a couple of times so
we'll just tune it up and then what I tend to do is bend the strings just to
get some stretch in the strings and then we need to turn it again obviously and
then the only thing left to do really is just play and you may need to tune it
again after that
so thanks very much for watching the video I know it was a fairly long one I
know it wasn't the most interesting subject unless you've got a guitar with
vintage tuners so thanks for watching all the way to the end there's other
videos if you want to check them out as well and I hope to see you next time so
thanks again