Hey there fellow guitar people, welcome back. Today I have an exciting
lesson one of my favorite things to do with
guitar. It's changing strings. Not.
Okay let's get real. Not one of my favorite things to do about
playing guitar but I'll tell you this, when I put new strings on and I get it
tuned up maybe the second tuning so everything sounds good.
Oh I'm sure glad I did it and it almost always gives me a little
kick to want to play more guitar. And one thing's for sure,
it is a lot easier maybe even a little bit of fun
if you have all the right tools ready and you know what you're doing
so let's do this.
Okay I've got all my tools ready. I have some guitar polish. This is music nomad
guitar detailer and music nomad F1 oil. Now I have the strings that I'm
going to use. These are D'Addario custom lights. I usually use just regular
light gauge which starts with a 0.12 but these are 0.11 a little bit
lighter. I want to try them out. And my favorite
part, my automatic string winder. Yes, I love my
tools and of course a leak free cloth. I'm
going to start off by loosening the strings.
Now I'm going to use my string winder. This makes it a lot faster
and I got to make sure I get going the right direction. Now I just want to loosen
them enough so when I cut the strings they don't smack me in the
face. Some people really like to change one string at a
time to protect the guitar from the loss of tension all of a
sudden. If this was a really expensive handmade guitar I might
consider that but generally speaking I prefer to take all the strings off at
one time. I find the ability to clean the
fretboard thoroughly during that time more advantageous than any problems with
the neck which I haven't had any problems
yet.
Now I'm going to clip the strings using a small tool. It's made for
clipping guitar wires but you can use any wire clipper. The nice thing about
this it has a little tool to pull out the
pins. You'll see that in a minute. So I like to clip them up here
and then I'm going to pull the strings off here.
I like to clip them up high because it's easier to get this part off than if
there's a bunch of string hanging out
and now it's time to pull the pins out.
Okay be careful to hold on to these. You're going to need them. It's common
for one of them to fall on the floor and to be looking for
it later. Now it's time for a little polish.
I'll start off with my detailer guitar polish.
Same thing. Sounds better.
Now the bridge the small white piece of the guitar fell out when I turned it
over. This is not uncommon but make sure you
put it in the right way. It can go one of two ways. S one way to tell
is that generally the higher end is going to go on the
side with the thick strings. So I know the sixth strings are going to go along
here so this is the higher end. The sixth string the thicker strings
need a little more clearance also there's a little indentation on the
bridge right here and that's to compensate for the second
string it needs a little extra help. Okay now I'm going to clean up the fretboard
a little bit. I'm going to put a little bit of my oil
on the cloth just a little bit. It goes a long way
and spread it very thinly on the fretboard. I like to use a paper towel
here often too but since I have my cloth handy I'll use this and
rub it into the fretboard. I'm after a light coating and I don't
want to get it on the rest of the guitar either. This cloth
cleans the fretboard and conditions it with the oil so it doesn't crack
easily.
So I put just a few little drops and it's going to last the entire way.
Let me get a little back here. There we go.
Looking good. Now if my fretboard was really dirty
I might want to pull out just a little bit very fine steel wool
and try to scrape off some of the stuff but I've kept this pretty good.
Okay now I'm going to use a dry part to really get any excess oil off.
Oh I think I missed the headstock. A little dusty there,
that's better.
I think we're ready for new strings.
The strings are color coded on the ball ends so it says the silver is the first
string. Well that makes sense that's the
thinnest string. We'll start there.
First I'm going to put the ball end in.
I'm going to push the ball down with the end of the pin.
Make sure the little groove on the pin is facing that way.
Now stretch up to the top.
I want the string to go through the hole.
I want to leave a little slack because I need some room to wind around the peg.
I know pretty well how much to cut off but it might be a good idea to not cut
anything until you've wound it. I've done this enough times I know that
I can cut approximately 3 to 4 inches and
that's gonna be enough so I'm gonna go with
what I'm used to. Then I'm gonna back it up,
crimp it slightly so it stays put and start winding.
Okay, looking good. I got a few more winds than I expected. I
could have cut another inch or so off the string but better to have a little
more than too little. Now I'll go ahead and do the other 5
strings in the same way. Let's see. The second string is purple.
I like to give the string a little yank to make sure it's up
right close to the peg or underneath the peg because if it's down low once you
start winding it, it'll slip sooner or later.
This way I know it won't slip.
Okay we're down to the last sixth string. You'll find that the thicker strings
need a little less on the end because the thicker and they wind a little.
They also tend to stick a little better because they're rough.
Now I have one beautiful strum and clean
guitar. What I would do is tune it up roughly.
I usually start with like the sixth string get it in tune and turn the other
strings to it then let it set for a while sometimes even overnight
then tune it again that gives the strings time to stretch so I'm not
just going back and forth. Okay, I hope you found this helpful.
If you'd like a written step-by-step list of all the steps,
go over to my blog I'll put a link and we've outlined it for you so you don't
have to keep going back to the video. Also if you have more questions me and
my assistant made a great video, it's a live question and answer call about many
different aspects about acoustic guitar mostly around maintenance and care
and I talk about what strings and different aspects of how to keep your
guitar in good shape. I'll put a link to that also you might
find it helpful. Thanks for joining me. I'm Tomas Michaud from Real Guitar
Success. I hope to see you again soon either on
my next YouTube video or come on over to Real Guitar Success
and see what's going on there. Bye for now.