Hi there, I'm Tomas Michaud and today is the 4th day in my 30-day guitar
coaching series. Today I'm going to tackle restringing the nylon string
guitar. I've had questions over the years and there are a few little tricks I want
to show you so let's get down to this. By the way I'm
in my backyard it's a beautiful sunny day in California so I thought I'd take
advantage of it and at the same time we can get down to
business. Here we have the tools I'll be using. I'm
going to use an electronic string winder. I really like it. It
saves me a lot of time. I also have the strings of course
and a poly cloth and polish because I'm going to polish the guitar between
snapping the strings off and putting the new strings on. And of course, I've got
some clippers to clip the strings and a tuner which I'm going to need at
the end and probably many times afterwards. Okay, I'm
going to start off by loosening the strings
so let me do this.
Now the string winder can go two different ways. It can tighten or loosen.
I have it set to go loosen
because I'm going to cut the strings and I don't want to snap in my face.
Okay that should do the trick. Time to cut. I cut once up here
and then I cut down here to save myself some trouble.
I've tied these on good so this takes a little bit.
Okay time to polish the guitar. Let's give it a good shine.
Okay we're gonna start with the first string, the high E string.
One, first string and it's also called high E.
The reason is this has a little extra winding. The ones with the
plain nylon. You have two types of strings. Some that have a winding. We
still call them nylon because they're a nylon cord with round.
On top of the nylon cord is a metal winding. Then you have the
plain nylon. It looks like fish line that's what I think of I used to fish when I
was a kid. So this one tends to slip, so this is
going to be the hardest one to keep to tie properly I should say. So
first of all, the easy part. Up here, we're going to slip it through
once
and then wrap it around once through itself.
A simple knot if you could call it and then
I'm gonna pull it so it stays firm. Now I'll go to the other side. This is
good because once I wind it that's enough.
And I need to provide some slack because we're going to wind it up and if it's
tight I've got nowhere to wind it. Now I'm going to pull the string through
the little hole here,
pull it back a little to allow some slack to wind it up.
Now here's the trick. I'm going to wrap it around the string
once
then I'm going to go back through and do a couple more
wraps.
Slippery little thing.
And two, okay if you do three, two seems to work for me
and when I tighten it makes a knot. Let's do that one more time.
This is the key - undoing now some slack
gonna wrap it around once and I want the end of the string aiming
this way when I'm done. So see it's going to make a loop around.
Now I'm going to loop it around the loop
1 2
So now I want to hold the string so it's aiming that way
towards the sixth string of the guitar, the thick string. Now pull it tight
and then make sure I got enough slack.
That looks okay. It's not a critical. It's exactly right.
Now I'm going to hold that and wind it. Let's get a little going here first.
Wrong way. There we go.
So I want about 3 winds on the peg winder here.
That's 1, 2 let's look and 3 and that's why I like the
electric peg winder. It saves me a lot of trouble. Oh I feel it getting tighter,
good. Now I'm going to check this other end
looking good but I want to make sure that this ends
up down there. I did pretty good this time.
Okay let's go on to another string. This is the second string
and we're going to do the same thing as we did with the first and the third.
They're both plain nylon. Then we'll do something
different when we get to the round strings.
I'll go quickly through this.
Okay now we're ready to go on with the round strings. I'm going to start with
the fourth string or D depending on what you want to call it.
And the round strings are a little different because they have some
friction on them so they tend to stay put. I don't have to be so
careful about winding them. Be careful unlike me don't put the first string
right there the fourth string rather. The fourth string goes there.
The sixth string actually is the lower one and the fourth strings are higher so
let's get this right.
Now because this string has a lot more friction I don't really need to tie it
here but I am going to tie at least this one
just because it's a little easier to hold on to it while I'm working on the
other end. When you get to the sixth string it gets
pretty hard to tie it.
Now as I put the fourth string through the hole
I'm going to wrap it just one time through and I want the string to end up
this going this way. So I'm going to wrap it up this way and then
once through so it ends up the end sticking this way.
I'm also going to use this opportunity to tie or to
kind of clamp down on these loose first, second and third strings.
It looks neater and it's also a little extra security. Let's take a close look
at that. I'm pushing the string through leaving
some slack, now I'm wrapping it around this way once.
Now the string's end is aiming this way towards the thin strings.
I'm going to wrap it around one more time and still the string is
aiming the same way. Now I'm going to tuck these strings
under a little bit not critical but looks better.
Harder than I thought.
There we go.
Now we'll find out.
So if I wasn't feeling a little pressure I spent a little more time maybe trying
to get it to look a little neater. I like for the end of the sixth
string to be down low but for practical purposes this
is just fine and I'm going to leave it. There we go. Now I'm ready to tighten it
up. Okay now let's finish it up. I've left quite a bit of slack here. I think I'm
gonna pull this a little bit tighter. It's a
little too much.
Okay let's quickly go through the fifth and sixth strings.
Now one tip I want to mention about the sixth string, it has a
part on the one end of the sixth string that the winding is a little bit looser
it's easier to flex. Because the sixth string is so stiff, I
want to reserve that part for tying down here. Let's go on with
that. Okay now we're ready for a little trim
job. Let's clean up the strings here. I don't want to get poked in the eye
here so do a little trimming.
I don't need to trim the first 3 strings because they're caught
underneath these strings here and then over here.
Now I'm ready to tune the guitar for the first time. No small feet.
I'll start with the sixth string and get the sixth string in tune and then
roughly tune all the other strings to the sixth
string. Because the guitar is going to stretch so much
I'll have to let it sit overnight anyway so I'll probably just
tune it with the tuner a few times. No, it's only going to be rough and then
come back at it after it's stretched for at least several hours
preferably overnight. Thank you for joining me today. It's been a pleasure.
I look forward to seeing you again soon. Hopefully tomorrow I'll be doing another
video. Hey if you have any tips on changing strings or things that have
worked for you, let us know in the comments below. We'd
love to hear from you. Bye for now