Tips on How to Restring Your Electric Guitar: A Guide

Restringing your guitar is really easy, but many guitarists still don't know the proper technique for restringing a guitar. Here's my guide on how to restring a guitar properly. After you read my guide, I'll give you a few tips that I learned through experience that you'll never hear from anyone else.

electric scooter

Here's what we'll need to begin the restringing process:
New Strings - I prefer nickel plated steel strings, as they last longer and stay brighter than other string types. Wire Cutters - You'll need these to cut off the extra length of string. Tuner - You'll need this to tune your new strings up.

ELECTRIC

Now that you have those, let's get ready to restring your electric guitar.

Step #1 - Take off your old strings.

For now, only remove the low E string, if you have a string winder, this is where it will come in handy. You need to turn the tuning peg enough that the string can be unwound off of the tuning mechanism. Once you have removed the string from the tuning peg, you'll need to feed the string back out of the bridge and pull it out of the guitar.

Step #2 - Insert the new string into the bridge of your electric guitar.

Once you've opened the new pack of strings, take the low E string and insert it through the bridge and feed it back up. Make sure that you have pulled the string as far through as it can go.

Step #3 - Set the string inside of the nut and wrap it around the tuner.

Set the string in the nut, and rotate the tuning peg so that the hole is parallel with the nut. Wrap the string around the peg 2-3 times below the hole, and insert the string through the hole.

(Note, if your guitar has tuning trees like the Fender Standard Stratocaster, you'll need to run the string underneath of the tree before you wrap the string around the peg.)

Step #4 - Tighten up your new string.

While pulling the extra length to keep the strings wrapped tightly, turn the tuning peg as many times as it needs for the string to be tight enough to make a sound.

Step #5 - Tune up your string.

Tune your string up to the desired note. When you first install new strings, the guitar will not stay in tune for very long, so just keep tuning the guitar up to the note and eventually the strings will be stretched enough to stay in tune properly.

Step #6 - Change the rest of your strings

Now that you have done the low E string, you need to alternate across the fretboard so the tension of the guitar neck doesn't get screwed up. Here's the correct order in which to change them.

1. low E

2. High E

3. A

4. B

5. D

6. G

I've taught you all the basics, here's a few tips that I learned over time through experience that will help you out greatly:

Tip #1 - Make sure that you are wrapping the string around the peg a few times. I really mean it, this will make sure your string doesn't slip when you tune or bend the string.

Tip #2 - Stretch your strings out every time that you put new ones on. Pull the string away from the neck and bend it left to right. This will make the guitar stay in tune better.

Tip #3 - Always alternate which one you change. If you don't you could risk damaging your neck and throwing off the tension of it. This will cause you to have buzzing, or it could cause you to go out of tune a lot.

If you've installed new strings and did all of the things that I told you to do properly, then it could be time to replace your guitar. I had this problem last year and I decided on getting a new one. You can see the guitar that I chose below in the review box.

Tips on How to Restring Your Electric Guitar: A Guide

ELECTRIC