There comes a time in every guitarist’s life when they need to change one or all of their guitar strings. If you’re new to guitar and not overly familiar with how to change guitar strings, then it might seem a little daunting. Or maybe you’ve changed your guitar strings for years but just want to read up on how you can improve the process. In any case, this guide to stringing a guitar will go over everything you need to know, step-by-step, for changing your acoustic guitar strings.
Let’s get into it.
How to Make Your Guitar Strings Last Longer
Let’s face it, changing guitar strings isn’t the most fun thing to do. It takes time, costs money, and I’m sure you’d much rather be actually playing your guitar. So, for those of you who want to prolong the life of your guitar strings, there are a couple of things you can do.
- Wipe down your strings / fretboard after every use – Doing this will help prolong the life of your strings by helping to prevent grime from building up and rust from forming. To do this, you can simply use a cloth or a dedicated guitar string cleaner.
- Wash your hands before playing – This goes “hand-in-hand” (pun intended) with the tip mentioned above. Washing your hands helps reduce the amount of oil and grime that builds up on your guitar’s strings and fretboard. Thus helping to prolong the life of your strings.
- Buy higher quality strings – Certain string manufacturers sell guitar strings that last longer. Take Elixir for instance, this string manufacturer uses a protective coating around their strings in order to prolong the life of their strings. They say that this coating helps extend the life of their strings by 3-5 times, which I can attest that these do last much longer than other string brands.
- Keep your guitar in a case – Ensuring that your guitar is placed in a case and properly humidified will help protect it against environmental factors including humidity, dust, etc.
How Often Should Guitar Strings be Changed?
The answer to this question is quite variable depending on how much you actually play your guitar. Someone who gigs frequently may change their strings on a bi-weekly basis whereas someone who just picks up the guitar every few days may not have to change their strings for a couple of months.
However, assuming you play an hour a day, a good rule of thumb is to change your strings every 4-6 weeks. Whenever you start to feel that your strings don’t sound as full and crisp as they used to or they don’t feel as smooth on your fingers, then it’s probably time to change your strings.
List of Supplies You’ll Need
When changing your guitar strings, I recommend having the following list of supplies handy.
- A new set of strings (I used an Elixir Phosphor Bronze set in this tutorial)
- A wire cutter
- Dunlop body and fingerboard cleaning kit
- A string winder (or you can choose to use a 2-in-1 string winder and cutter tool)
Once you’ve got all of your supplies ready, it’s time to start changing the guitar strings.
Steps to Stringing a Guitar
Below, I’ve outlined my step-by-step process to stringing a guitar (in this case, an acoustic guitar). Follow each step carefully and you’ll have a fully restrung guitar in no time.
- The first step in the guitar string changing process is to remove all of the strings currently on the guitar. To do this, start by using your string winder tool and loosening the strings.
Once they are nice and loose, use your wire cutter and cut the string at the soundhole. Then remove the string piece from the tuning post.
- Next, you want to remove the piece of the guitar string that is inside of the bridge peg. Your string winder tool will have a handy cutout where you can slide into the bottom of the peg in order to remove it.
You can also apply a bit of the lemon fretboard cleaner to your guitar’s bridge as well to help keep it healthy (as long as it is also made of rosewood).
Stringing a Guitar – In Summary
Hopefully, this post has helped you with stringing a guitar. There are certainly a few tricks involved in doing it right and efficiently. Another great tool that you can use to restring a guitar even faster is Roadie. This automatic tuner not only tunes your guitar for you but also has a handy wind / unwind feature that allows you to more efficiently change your guitar strings.
Let me know in the comments section below if you have any handy tricks for stringing a guitar or if you had any troubles changing your guitar strings, I’ll do my best to help.
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