How to Change Guitar Strings
Learning how to change guitar strings is a fairly straightforward and important piece of maintenance which every guitarist should know how to do. Thinner gauge electric guitar strings, in particular, may need to be changed quite frequently, even if none of the strings have broken. It is also important to use the correct strings, particularly with acoustic guitar strings, where there are two very distinctly different types of strings.
The Manual
One thing every guitarist should try to have is the manual for their particular guitar. Most every guitar should have one, but it is quite common place for guitar stores not to give the actual shipping box to the buyer, which is often where the manual is. When buying a new guitar, be sure to ask for the manual. However, if you don’t have the manual, it may very well be posted on the company website and if not, try to request it from the company. This manual often has the specific information for the bridge and tuners on a particular guitar, and makes a good reference, particularly for guitars that don’t have a standard bridge.
Guitar Bridges
There are two basic ways to attach the strings to the bridge, since most people working on how to play guitar, likely have non-floating bridge guitars, this is the one that will be focused on. In a few rare cases, the tuning pegs are actually down at the bridge (usually travel guitars have this type of setup), if that is the case, it is easier to simply consider the top of the neck as the bridge.
In most cases of how to change guitar strings, both with electric guitar strings and acoustic guitar strings, the string will be run through a piece at the bridge, and the ball end will secure it. In some cases, this will either be the bridge itself, separate tail piece, or a hole that goes through the body of the guitar. Floating bridges will usually require the string to be locked into the bridge, often with the ball end of the string cut off, but this varies depending on the model of bridge.
Tuning Keys
The tuning keys are the ultimate destination of the other end of the string, after it is properly run through the bridge and nut of the guitar. There are two basic kinds, locking and non-locking tuners. Locking tuners are more common on higher end, non-floating bridge guitars, and depending on the make of the tuner, the locking mechanism varies from an automatic system to a piece that much be screwed and unscrewed to lock and unlock the tuner. Unlike a non-locking tuner, there should usually be less than a full wrap of string around the tuner.
Non-locking tuners are crucial to wrap properly. The key is to ensure that the string does not wind over itself at any point, which could result in tuning instability. Some guitarists like to wrap the string to bite down on the end of the string, but this is not actually strictly necessary in terms of how to change guitar strings for electric guitar strings. This is much more standard practice with thicker acoustic guitar strings, particularly on classical guitar strings, where the nylon strings can pull out when changing them fairly easily.
String Stretching
String stretching is a very important and often neglected part of string changing. When working on how to play guitar chords without doing this, it is quite apparent the guitar is going out of tune. Strings stretch to a certain extent, so by stretching them and retuning until stretching no longer throws the guitar out of tune. The tuning will remain stable without the interference of stretching by the strings.
