Stringing along, strung out...a comedy of errors

[lblanchard]

Wherein our cyclist learns a thing or two about guitar strings...

I've played nylon string guitars all my life and can re-string my classical guitar with the best of them. I've never re-strung a steel-string guitar, though. Recently I was watching a teaching video by -- yeah, that guy, halfmoon_mollie -- and he made a disparaging reference to people who "change their strings once a year whether they need it or not." I looked at my seven year old Martin and beater, still on their original strings, said yikes, looked up the appropriate set of Martin strings, went to Amazon, and now I own them.

But how the heck do you string one of these guitars? With a classical guitar, it's all right out there for you to see and emulate, but both the beater and the Martin have these little peg things. Best to check it out on Beater I thought, so I started backing off the tension on the first string. Who more surprised than I when the damned thing snapped? Hey, I was loosening the tension, not tightening it!

Well, crap. I don't have new strings for the Beater. And I don't know what it takes. I guess I'll strap the gig bag to my bike and pedal on over to Rustic Music for some advice and a new set of strings. And maybe I should order a second set of Martins to be on the safe side.

Comments

[halfmoon-mollie.livejournal.com]

see, I can restring my Walton (although it's been restrung twice, once by my brother once by what's his face) but I doubt I could restring your classical guitar.

Guess I'd better talk to Dana - I think it must be time to be restrung.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

I threw the Takamine Jasmine in the gig bag and pedaled off to Rustic Cycle, where the nice man gave me a restringing lesson with a free string -- I also bought a set, but don't feel like tackling that yet. Classicals are a little tricky but not terribly so. You put the string through the holes in the whatsit (the one at the bottom, not the one by the nuts) and then loop it around, making sure the crossover is below the corner of the whatsit. Tension keeps it where it belongs. True artistes do a bunch of twisty things that make it prettier, but I never bothered.

I bought light gauge strings (11s) to ease the callus maintenance process, since this guitar is such a club. I have 12 gauge to go on the Martin. But I really don't feel like tackling either one at the moment. Mr. Rustic Music said my strings still sound surprisingly good.