How to Restring an Acoustic Guitar
How to Restring an Acoustic Guitar 1. Place the guitar in a safe stable position, preferably in a neck cradle. Loosen the strings a good dozen turns or so. String winders are very helpful for this stage of the restring. Be prepared for the occasional string breakage that happens with the release of tension. Safety glasses are always a good idea or at least make sure not to have your eyes near the headstock when either tightening or releasing the tension on a string. Some players refrain from loosening and replacing all the strings at once to avoid such a large change in tension against the neck. However if you do remove the strings, this is is a great opportunity to clean and oil the fretboard as well as the face of the guitar! 2. Once the tension is released on all the strings, remove the bridge pins. String winders have a slot in the tuner cup for this purpose. Pliers will work, but be very careful as any side pulling will break the pin and leave part of it in the guitar. If this happens, the broken piece must be pushed back up through the bridge pin hole from inside the guitar. Also, do not leverage any tool against the bridge face as it will dent the wood. 3. Pull the strings free of the bridge pin holes and lay them clear of the face of the guitar. At this point, you may find that you did not loosen the string enough and a few more turns should do the trick. The smaller strings can sometimes cut into the bridge pin slot and be slightly lodged there. A gentle tugging should pull them free. If a string was broken, the ball at the end may still be lodged in the pin slot and can be pushed inward and retrieved through the sound hole. 4. Unwind the dead strings one at a time from the machine head posts. Be careful when the string is finally pulled free of the post as it can either scratch the face of the headstock, or poke your finger. A sore finger tip is no fun to play a gig with. Wind up the strings and dispose of them properly. Make sure to get any pieces that may have landed on the floor as strings can wind around a vacuum power head rotor and are hard to remove. Take this time to clean the headstock face. 5. Use a dry soft cloth to rub fret oil or conditioner into the open grain of any non-finished fretboard. Oil from your fingers combines with the oxide that is created from strings breaking down and frets being debraded. This leaves a black substance that penetrates the fretboard and accumulates to the sides of the frets. A good strong rubbing of oil around every inch of the fretboard will release this dirt. Watch your cloth until a fresh oiled area of the cloth comes clean after rubbing. This means it is properly cleaned. Also be wary of poorly fretted guitars that...
Read MoreHow to Store a Guitar
How to Store a Guitar Once a person owns a guitar, care and upkeep are the next learning experience for any player. Earlier we discussed when to change strings, what type of strings to use, breaking guitar strings and so on. The most important thing you can do for your guitar is to limit the temperature and moisture changes it is exposed to. If your guitar could speak it would cry out against these injustices! It is up to us to treat our guitar as a friend. The first change that guitars go through is from the climate controlled environment it is manufactured in, through shipping to the store, opened and displayed, and then purchased and taken to its first home. Don’t be surprised if a guitar needs an adjustment after it has settled in at it’s new home. At the very least these changes will effect the tuning. More serious effects can be cracked faces, looses braces, and warped backs, sides, and tops. Here are some guidelines and a few absolute no-no’s to protect your guitar from serious changes. Note that electric guitars aren’t as sensitive to the cold as an acoustic or classical but in all, this list pertains to all guitars. *Never store a guitar in an unheated garage that has an exposed concrete floor. *Never store a guitar in an attic – period! This is a BIG no-no. *Never store a guitar near a ceiling where the temp rises significantly – as in ceiling heat or a warm house. *Never store a guitar in an unheated room. *Never store a guitar on concrete. *Never leave a guitar in a car when the outside temperature is lower than 50 degrees, or warmer than 70 degrees, and even then only keep your guitar there for very short periods of time. If you live in a dry environment such as a desert or you heat with a woodstove it is a good idea to purchase a hygrometer and monitor the moisture in your guitars environment. In the opposite, be careful taking a fine instrument camping in the damp woods and having it face a hot dry fire for a few hours, and then exposed to the high moisture all night. I use what I call a utility guitar with a ply top for my camping guitar enjoyment – less of a risk because it is a lower cost guitar. Ideal moisture levels are available throughout an internet search, but checking with your manufacturers recommendations is always a good idea, especially if it is a high dollar instrument. For the most part, guitars are pretty resilient to small changes. Most of the effects of major moisture and temperature changes can be very damaging and create the need for costly repairs. Just use a little common sense and remember that your guitar…your friend doesn’t have a voice. Happy playing & thank you for supporting your local music store! Like us on Facebook! www.facebook.com/GreshamGuitar ...
Read MoreHow to Hold Your Guitar
How to Hold Your Guitar There is a guitar stand out there that holds your guitar in the playing position so you can just walk right up to it and play without having to strap your guitar on. I’m guessing though that if you play guitar, you hold it yourself and play either standing up or sitting down! How you hold and play your guitar can affect your playing (and your body) over the longevity of your playing life. There is a trend of some guitarists and bassists who slinging their instruments as low as they can to look cool. Or I assume it is to look cool because from an ergonomics perspective, this technique can rob from your skeletal/muscular system stamina when you try to keep this up over a period of hours (and years!). If you pay attention, it appears that as the average player ages, they choose to wear their instruments farther up towards their shoulders. The angle of your wrist and your ability to move your fingers freely without pain becomes a consideration as a player ages. We all have moments where we lax into bad posture. Good posture takes constant reminders to yourself until it becomes a habit. Here is a website with pictures and explanations about different types of playing positions. Take a moment to play in each of the pictured positions and feel what the differences are. Pick out a playing exercise or riff that requires endurance or stamina. Play the same riff in different positions – your playing can feel a whole lot easier when you play it in the right position! I played with the same guitar and strap for years and one day I forgot my guitar (I know…. how embarrassing is that?!). Well, the other guitar player let me use his spare for the night and his strap was slung higher up. What a difference! Just 2 inches up and it changed my playing forever. Taking the time to practice good playing posture can pay big dividends in the long term. It is important because we need the youth to step up and replace all of us aging rockers, pickers & strummers! Happy playing & thank you for supporting your local music store! Like us on Facebook! www.facebook.com/GreshamGuitar...
Read MoreThings About Strings, Part III – What Type of Guitar Strings Should I Use?
What Type of Guitar Strings Should I Use? So this is our third blog on strings. We first talked about how to know when it is time to change your strings, then dealing with the inconvenience of a broken string, and now I will write about what brand, type and size of strings to use. Strings are sometimes specific to the guitar so knowing the type of guitar you have is important. If the guitar you play has a sound hole of some type where the sounds of the vibrating strings bounce around inside the guitar and then escape through the hole, you have an acoustic guitar. If you can plug this guitar into an amplifier because it has a pickup, it is still an acoustic guitar. Acoustic guitars can use either steel strings with the larger strings wrapped in phosphor bronze or silver plated copper; or nylon strings with the larger strings wrapped as well. Remember that just because some of the nylon string sets have wrapped strings, they are still nylon core! This is important because of the additive tension that a full set of strings puts on the neck, bridge, and face of an acoustic guitar. Steel string acoustics are designed to accommodate steel strings that exert approximately 180# of pull when tuned properly. Classical acoustic guitars are designed to accommodate nylon strings that exert approximately 70# of pull. Because of this large difference in tension, steel strings should never be installed on a classical guitar. At the very least it will bow the neck, but it also has the potential to pull the bridge right off of the guitar! Putting nylon strings on a steel string is possible, but you will have to alter the nut slots (which is permanent) and the sound will be less than desirable. If your guitar is electric, the strings are generally steel core and the larger ones are wrapped in nickel-plated steel. Most electric guitars are sold with a string set beginning with .009″. Most Acoustic guitars are sold with a string set beginning with .012″. Larger diameter strings may require some adjustments to the guitar (and your calluses), but will reward you with louder volume and sustained tone. Happy playing & thank you for supporting your local community music store! Like us on Facebook! www.facebook.com/GreshamGuitar...
Read MoreThings About Strings…Part II
Broken Guitar Strings TWANG! It is a surprise when you are playing or tuning your guitar and a string breaks – it is sudden, final and not always the most convenient timing! Thankfully the price of a single string or a new set is fairly economical and the biggest hurdle is traversing to your local music store to get the replacement(s) you need. A way to avoid this inconvenience is to have a back up set or sets with your guitar at all times. How many back up strings (or sets) to have on hand depends on how often you normally change them. It’s probably a good idea to own strings that you will be able to use within a year’s time. I try to have one extra set, and single replacements for the little E & B strings. Those are the strings most likely to break from repeated bending and usage. If you have other strings breaking on your guitar this could be an indication that: The strings are old You play hard and attack the string near the bridge A burr or sharp break point on either the bridge saddle or the post of the tuning machine Take note of where that string is breaking and see your local luthier about properly removing the burr or sharp edge if this is the case. Happy playing & thank you for supporting your local community music store! Like us on Facebook! www.facebook.com/GreshamGuitar...
Read MoreThings About Strings…Part I
Things About Strings When to Change Your Guitar Strings Of all the reasons we may pick up an acoustic guitar and strum it, the most obvious reason is to hear the tones that emanate from it. Each guitar, with different shapes, sizes and tone woods, produces unique tones. But no matter the design of your guitar, one of the easiest ways to bring your guitar back to life is to change your strings often. Our hands generally have oils, dirt, and sometimes a corrosive aspect to guitar strings that comes from your unique skin PH. The length of time that your strings remain vibrant with the full tonal spectrum they started with varies with the cleanliness of your hands, your own PH level, and the hours of practice you put in over time. For players that either have a more corrosive PH to their skin, play their guitar with dirty hands, or just play daily for well over an hour, a month can easily signal the end of a strings tonal validity. Yet even the occasional player who washes their hands, wipes down the strings after playing, and have non corrosive PH to their skin, will find that changing their guitars strings after playing on them for 6 months will enhance their playing experience. I find it surprising that many players feel that if the strings are still on the guitar, they must still be performing in a manner they were intended for. On the other end of the spectrum, I have known many players who change them every week. When I played live with my electric guitar I changed them every night! One way to compare is to bring your guitar into your local music store and ask about the newest acoustic guitar string then compare the differences in brightness – you might be surprised. Regardless, new strings are a small investment that will bring a big return in experience. Happy playing & thank you for supporting the music store in your community! Like us on Facebook! www.facebook.com/GreshamGuitar...
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