How to Restring a Guitar

(according to Jesse Tucker, guitarist extraordinaire, co-writer of Jessie Farrell’s first single “Let’s Talk About Love”, and lover of all things pocket vortex with a mild to extreme crackberry addiction)

This is my first time restringing my lovely Larrivee so let’s take it from the top…

Step One: Acquire some new guitar strings. I was very lucky to have these bad boys given to me by Tucker. Thanks Muck. You’re Awesome. The strings are awesome too. They are coated with Nanoweb (not exactly sure what that is, but it seems pretty high tech and kinda makes me feel like a superhero… “ah ha! You try to infiltrate my layer Beast Master, but what you do not know is that I am protected by an ultra thin Nanoweb… stronger than a thousand steel spider webs and wired with a million tiny electrode sensors!!!! Hiyah!!” Anyway… geeknerdgeek.

Step Two: Unwind guitar string with “stringer tool” (which looks like a New Year’s noise maker and probably has a name…)

Step Three: Take pin out the bridge with the other end of the “stringer tool” which will release old string. Take old string off.

Step Four: Get new string and unravel it.

Step Five: Line up the the ball end (looks like an eyelet) of the new string in the hole of the bridge and use the peg to push the eyelet down into the hole. Push down on the peg to make sure the string is secured.

Step Six: Stretch the string into the nut and thread string through tuning pegheads (make sure that the eye of the tuning peg is parallell to frets.)

Step Seven: Kink string to prevent it from slipping. Remember to give the string some slack for winding. The “E” string needs about 2 full wraps around, “A” string needs about 3..etc. If you wind it to tight it might snap! SNAP!

Step Eight: Wind it up (counterclockwise) a lot. Make sure that each wind of the string goes below the previous one. I had to hold the string and tug on it a little to keep it winding properly. Also, keep a watch on the pin in the bridge to make sure it doesn’t pop out. I had to push it in a few time during the winding to keep the string in place. You should stretch the strings a little with your thumb and index finger and then re-tune a couple of times until the string settles into its groove.

Step Nine: Cut string with wire cutters as close to tuning peg as possible (cuz those ends are sharp… ouch!)

Hooray! You’re done.

(All photos taken by the Beast Master himself, Ryland Haggis)