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Re-stringing your guitar presents a good opportunity to check it's set-up, cleanliness, and general well-being.

Remove the old strings letting the tension down evenly and throw them away.  Check the frets for wear and see how clean the fingerboard is.  Rosewood and ebony boards are best cleaned with lemon oil and a cloth as this will both clean and feed the wood taking away any dryness and creating a faster action.  For varnished maple boards I would recommend a clean with ordinary antistatic household spray polish - It works a treat.

If your frets were worn, get them checked out by a guitar tech.  They may need just a stone-down and polish, or the first three to five frets replacing, it's quite rare to need a full re-fret.

Clean the neck, head and body of your instrument paying particular attention to the part of the belly just in front of the bridge where a lot of grot seems to gather.  (Ordinary antistatic spray is fine for this again)

Now it's time to fit your new strings.  Take your new strings out one by one and fit them leaving the tension low so that you can then tighten them gradually increasing the tension in stages across the neck.  If your guitar has bridge pins, put the new string through the hole in the bridge, push in the pin, then pull the string until the ball end locks against the bottom of the bridge pin.  For Strat style guitars feed the string through the bridge from the bottom, then pull the string through until it fully locates in the bridge - failure to do this usually means you end up with loads of turns around the machine head when all you need is two or three.  This is a pet hate of mine because if a string goes at a gig it takes so long to unwind all those turns.  While we are on pet hates, my other one is people who pass their strings more than once through the hole in the machine capstan - unforgivable, because it makes it very difficult to release the string and as a guitar tech, I get injected on a daily basis by the sharp string ends!

Modern nylon strung guitars will require tying to the bridge using a timber hitch for the trebles and just a tucked loop for the basses which grip well because of the windings.  For the treble strings, thread the string through the bridge from the front to the back, bring the end back over the bridge, and then underneath itself.  Now take two turns around the loop you have created, trap the loose string end against the back of the bridge, and pull tight from the other end.  There is your timber hitch!  The bass strings are simpler...Feed the string through the bridge as before, bring the end back over the top of the bridge and under itself, but this time just put the string end through the loop created and hold it against the back edge of the bridge, pull the string tight from the other end and that's that! 

At the machine head, pass the other end of the string through the hole, then with the loose end, take one turn around the string and then tighten it. This method of stringing is secure, quick and efficient, particularly when it comes to an emergency string change. 

Finally, tune your guitar taking the pitch up evenly across the strings and check the nut slots for any signs of wear such as rattling against the first fret when an open string is played. 

I'll be back next month with another topic, so play your heat our until then!

To order any item or get more details phone 01305 756156

or email us at sales@melodyworks.com...