Sunday, September 12, 2010

Guitar Music Lessons - How To Change Guitar Strings

By David Copper

At some point, all guitarists require to learn how to change the strings on their guitar. Occasionally you'll be forced to change one when a string snaps. But usually, you'll merely wish to change them, as strings reduce their brightness and wear out.

Most Professional guitarists often change their strings before each gig. But in the long run, it all boils down to a matter of personal preference. Something to keep in mind if you're making use of your guitar for a gig, is that your strings require several hours of play to break in correctly. During this period, your strings will go out of tune as they stretch so you'll have to retune.

Anyway, here is what you do:

Take out the old strings by detuning the machine heads till the tension becomes loose enough to allow you to pull each string away from the headstock.

One more quick way to remove the old strings would be to snip them using a pair of wire cutters. Be extremely careful if you do it this manner.

How you go about installing your new strings will generally be based upon the type of guitar you have, as many guitars have slightly various techniques.

Here's a little insider tip guitarists have been making use of for a long time to get much more life from your steel strings as soon as you have removed them: Boil them.

Dropping a set of strings into a pan of boiling water for 10 to 15 minutes will remove a lot of the grimy accumulation and bring a new life back to what would otherwise be lifeless strings.

It will not carry on for very long, and you can't escape with doing it too numerous times, but it could be an effective temporary procedure.

Irrespective of what kind of guitar you have, your strings need to be stretched after you have put them on. When you first tune your guitar, place your hand under every string close to the pickup region, pull the string several centimeters away from the fretboard, then release it. If the pitch has fallen, re-tune and repeat the process. Keep doing this till all of the strings stay in tune.

On most electric guitars the strings are either secured at the bridge end by an independent tailpiece (just like most Gibson guitars), or passed through the body of the instrument from the back into an all-in-one bridge unit (like most fender style guitars)

At one end of every steel string, you'll find a tiny disc of metal around which one end of the string is wrapped. This really is called the ball end.

Take the opposite end of the string and thread it through the fixture at the bridge.

Pull the string through till the ball end stops you from pulling the string any further.

Most electric and steel-string guitars make use of a similar system for securing strings at the machine head. The capstan to which the string is attached stands out vertically from the headstock. Strings can be passed through a hole in the side of the capstan.

The end is then passed around and under, trapping it in place when the machine head is tightened. Several capstans have vertical slots rather than holes. To make use of these, cut the string to length, and insert into the tip of the capstan. Then bend the string to one side and wind it around.

This leaves the string endings nice and tidy. Here's what you need to do next: Slowly turn the machine head for each string, increasing the tension till the string becomes suitably tight.

To save yourself time and energy, you can use an inexpensive plastic string winder, which merely fits over the machine head permitting you to crank it along much more quickly.

If you want to know more about topic, you might want to check out a great read I found online. Go here: Guitar Music Lessons


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