Smile

My baby sitting pretty on my bed

I have been having the urge to re-string my guitar for the longest time. But somehow I just couldn’t get myself to do it for some weird reasons. After procrastinating for months, I finally got down to it!! At midnight last night. Am I crazy or what? I just felt like it. Haha, you’re right, I actually follow my emotions a lot!

So there lay my baby….beautiful as can be. And to treat your baby right you need the right tools. You want to spoil her not SPOIL her. First I must say, the way I do this may not be the way professionals agree on doing it. Now I must say I am not pro, I just find that this work for me.

First I have my new strings! My favorites are these; Ernie Ball Super Slinky Coated Titanium’s. Why? I’m no Elixir fan because they are too bright and just not my kind of sound. I was recommended these by a friend. I tried a few out before this and I must say these sound the sweetest. They cost the same as elixirs though‚Ķthat’s a downside. Upside is I really like the fact that it has titanium reinforcements cause I’m really a heavy strummer. Now I can play hard and not worry they’ll snap on me. I was wondering‚Ķ..will they really work? They do. I can’t even break my old strings. These strings have kind of a nice blend in between normal phosphor bronze strings sound and elixir bright sounds. Another thing I really really like? They are coated and are gold in color on the 1st 3 strings‚Ķ..nice! They are not silver like the usual. So nice!!

Next is a must have. The ultimate guitar-tuning tool! The planet waves pro winder. It is a tuner head winder, string clipper and a bridge pin puller. It is not expensive too. And it works. It does the job well as you will see later.

Pro-winder transform!!

Then you must have a good cloth to wipe your guitar. Not just any cloth but one that will not scratch your guitar. There are many many types of cloths available. Micro fiber cloths are good too. I have one but I’m not using that this time.

To accompany the cloth to remove the dirt, I got this Fender mist cleaner. It is not a polish because some say that polish actually spoils the guitar finish. This is just to remove those things that dirty you guitar like oil, dried saliva and dust! Hehe yeah quite disgusting.

So the first thing I do is loosen the strings.

Then I’ll remove the bridge pins. Use the pro-winder or else you’ll damage your bridge‚Ķ

Then I unwind the tuning heads one by one until they are loosed enough for me to remove the strings from the bridge.

It is time to remove the unwind strings at the headstock then

My photographer had to arrange the pins and take this photograph!

I usually coil together the old strings like that together for easy disposal

It is time to clean my guitar. Body, neck and all until it is shiny miny! (I invented that word; shiny miny. Nice?). Oh I don’t spray anything on the neck area. Only the body and head stock. I think it will damage it.

Looking good with the new set of strings all ready…..can you spot my toes? hahaha

After cleaning it so beautifully, it is time to re-string it with the new set of strings.

Unpacking them gently then placing them in the bridge holes then, I proceed to place the bridge pins in.

Then I start with the thickest string first, the 6th string. After putting in through the tuning heads hole, I then use one hand to hold it at the hole then with the other, I use my thumb to stretch it up and measure it with my pointer finger on the 5th fret. The height of the second finger will give it just the right length for tuning. If you have long fingers. You could probably use the 4th fret.

With that length held earlier, that hand will proceed to bend the strings at the hole at a 90 degrees angle.

It is time to cut off the extra length of string and then now we can begin tuning that string until you get a reasonably good tension (not too much). Turning the tuning head anti clockwise. You will see that the length works out beautifully. I do that for all the strings by order. Take note that you turn the bottom tuning heads anti clock wise as well.

See how nice the length turned out on the tuning head? Not too much not too little?

My transforming pro winder cutting the string snip snip snip

All nice and trimmed

When I’ve got all 6 strings done. I start tuning from the 6th string again with a tuner. Each time stretching the string a little and re-tuning. If this is not done, you will realize that the tuning will run as you play. Do it as many times as necessary until the pitch becomes stable and doesn’t go out of tune. Do it with every string then you will see that the 6th string will be out of tune again because the neck tension has changed. So I would repeat it until the strings pitch doesn’t run.

Ta da! We’re done. So easy! Right? I hope I have been clear enough haha. Here are some more pics of my baby. She sounds so so so so sweet now.

Tags: guitar, tuning