I have never done it before, but I think I’d like to give it a try. Obviously, I can do a Google search and hunt around, but any advice from you guys would be welcomed.
The guitar in question is electric – an SG, if that matters.
Your main goal when you restring is getting your pitch level quickly. If you do it wrong, you’ll be tweaking your tuning for three weeks. If you do it right, you’ll only be fighting it for a couple of days.
Strings stretch out after they go on the guitar (making it go flat until they’ve stretched as far as they’ll go). So two tips:
- As you’re putting it on and tightening it around the peg, hold the string midway down its length and pull it away from the bridge. Hold it as far away from the bridge as you can (without breaking it) as you continue to tighten. Yeah, you’ll sometimes break strings this way, but hey, that’s life. Just be careful.
- Wind as little string around the peg as you can get away with. If you send the string around the peg ten times, there’s that much more that has to stretch. The less length you’ve got, the less time it’ll be before your pitch levels out.
Other pointers:
- Don’t wind the string over the nub. Hard to explain without pictures, but you know the little quarter inch of string that has gone through the hole in the peg? Yeah, don’t tuck that under as you’re winding it up. It creates a kind of a cam that’ll make fine-tuning difficult later on.
- I’m assuming you’ve already got your new set of strings. If you don’t, that’s a whole 'nother topic.
- This is one of those questions about which, for whatever reason, many people hold many different opinions. And some people will defend their opinion to the death. For your first time, I recommend Googling it or having someone show you. On the other hand, it’s really not a big deal if you mess it up. It’s just guitar string.
Two things…
Take ONE string off. Replace with the new string. Close to the pitch but not “tuned”. Then take the second off, replace. Don’t take all six off at once. Very bad for the neck.
Second, I always left the long ends at the head intact. like 6 inch dangly ends. I’m into that whole Jimi distortion noise thang… the 6 ends waggling around, against each other, just added another element of noise. 
“Somebody” told me that a several wraps are preferable! Certainly not ten, but I was complaining that my guitar didn’t seem to hold its’ tune very well - and it seemed to help.
One tip that I picked up somewhere was that in general, to start tuning strings at the 6E and work up - B, G, D, A and the 1E, albeit it may seem intuitive or reflexive to start at the top.
We’ve been here before. I posted this last time someone asked about changing strings:
Do you have any tools? Pliers make the job a lot easier, I don’t bother carefully un-threading the old strings I just cut them off.
The high E should get about six turns round the peg by the time it’s up to pitch, the low E only needs two or three. It should be the friction round the peg that keeps the string tight not a knot where it goes throught hole.
Once a string is roughly up to tension give a firm yank to take out the initial bit of stretch.
Don’t cut a string to size until it is up to tension round the peg, on a wound string the core can slip from the outer winding and the string goes dead. Before you cut it put a 90 degree bend just before the cut (don’t do that dorky thing of winding the spare length into a little ring it looks stupid).
Once the set is on I slide a magazine or something between the strings and fretboard and give the strings a squirt of WD40, the idea is too keep them from corroding prematurely, who knows it might even work.
Strings don’t last forever (unless you don’t play the guitar). If you’re playing every day – which of course you are – you should be replacing them every few weeks.
Do you have any tools? Pliers make the job a lot easier, I don’t bother carefully un-threading the old strings I just cut them off.
The high E should get about six turns round the peg by the time it’s up to pitch, the low E only needs two or three. It should be the friction round the peg that keeps the string tight not a knot where it goes throught hole.
Once a string is roughly up to tension give a firm yank to take out the initial bit of stretch.
Don’t cut a string to size until it is up to tension round the peg, on a wound string the core can slip from the outer winding and the string goes dead. Before you cut it put a 90 degree bend just before the cut (don’t do that dorky thing of winding the spare length into a little ring it looks stupid).
Once the set is on I slide a magazine or something between the strings and fretboard and give the strings a squirt of WD40, the idea is too keep them from corroding prematurely, who knows it might even work.
Strings don’t last forever (unless you don’t play the guitar). If you’re playing every day – which of course you are – you should be replacing them every few weeks.
Clanger, that’s the first time I’ve ever seen anyone double post in one post, if you see what I mean. I think that deserves a prize. 
Apparently the “tie a knot” thing is no longer in fashion. F-F-F-Fashion. I do it that way, but I couldn’t find a site that shows a picture, and you don’t want to try it without visual aids.
There are lots of sites that describe changing strings, however. Here’s one with pictures and fairly simple instructions, and another that is quite wordy–tells you which fingers to use to hold the string (“With your 2nd, 3rd and 4th fingers underneath the string,”).
Cut ‘n’ paste (and paste again) from the old thread :smack:
First - as Small Clanger said, do a search and find other threads on this.
Secondly - I really disagree with “don’t take all six off at once - very bad for the neck” - I take off all the strings when I change them. Guitar techs do. Pros do - very few folks only do the one-at-a-time approach. For me, I sweat a lot and have to take them all off simply to clean the fingerboard…
Buy a string winder like this one. It really speeds up the tightening of the strings, and saves you from having to twist your wrist until it falls off.
I’ve always wondered whether or not the one string at a time approach was true. I’ve heard taking them all off at once hurts the neck, but how true is that?
In my experience, you won’t hurt the neck of an electric by taking off all the strings. You might lose the bridge, however, as some of them are held on only by string tension. Totally releasing tension on a spring-loaded whammy (vibrato) bar might be problematic as well.
What about an electric bass? Or doesn’t make a difference?
I don’t want to add more speculation and hearsay to this thread … but I’m going to anyways. Like Wordman said - I destring the whole thing most times to clean off the gunk on the neck/frets.
I’ve always heard that the big no-no is to put the strings back on in directional order - say from top to bottom or bottom to top as that can warp the neck by pulling it one way. (Like I said - I don’t know if that’s true or not) But, I just stagger them - put on a middle string here, a middle string there and work my way out.
A very timely thread! My daughter has played acoustic guitar for about a year and just bought herself an electric guitar. Her guitar teacher is helping us figure out what’s what, but then that uses up all her class time. I’m getting a copy of Guitars for Dummies from the library…between that and this thread, maybe we’ll manage to learn something.
We’ve done this one before. I’ve been changing strings for 20 some odd years and have never had a problem. Having said that, leaving a guitar unstrung for a long period of time isn’t good (we’re talking days or weeks here). Unstringing a guitar for the 10 minutes or so it takes to remove the strings, clean the neck, body under the strings and the headstock then restinging it shouldn’t hurt at all. If it does then there is a serious problem with the guitar. If you have a floating bridge (whammy bar) and unstring it, you might have to do some fine adjustment once it is restrung though I never had a problem back when I had a Floyd equiped guitar.
Slee
**DB ** - do a search on guitar in this Forum and there are a number of advice threads worth reading.
**slee **- once again, right on. Yeah, changing strings on a guitar with a floating whammy/tremolo bridge can be a pain, since the whole unit moves as you adjust string tension. I don’t recommend a guitar with that set-up for beginners and for folks who get a Strat because they can’t resist, I strongly recommend that they block the tremolo unit so it can’t move for at least the first couple of years.
**pool **- listen to slee, even with bass. If you leave the strings off (or much lower tension) on a bass for more than an hour to two, it can be an issue, but as part of normal maintenance and string changing, it is no big deal. However, another issue for bassists - should you EVER change your strings? Some bassists really, really prefer the tone of a bass with fully-worn in strings. The old-schooler greats - James Jamerson, Duck Dunn, etc - never changed their strings, to my knowledge. My bassist broke his G and had to change it - it was the first time he had done so in 20 years…and he plays a '62 P-Bass (drool) and gets the most amazing tone…
I’ve always changed the strings on my guitars by removing them from the outside in (E,E,A,B,D,G) and replacing them in the opposite order, from the inside out (D,G,A,B,E,E) just to sort of keep the tension even. I really don’t think it makes a heckuva lot of difference, though. One cool thing to do is take your first wrap on the winding post over the tag end, and the next wraps under. It helps to lock the tag end in place. I try to get at least three wraps on each post.
My first thought on seeing
was “who the hell changes strings on a bass?” 
I confess that I did put a new set on my older bass when I got my MusicMan S.U.B., but that was because I wanted to put flatwounds on the old one. I liked the idea of having one with flats, one with roundwounds.
This is the first I’ve heard of not changing them. That seems bizarre. Granted I don’t change them often. Maybe twice, three tops a year, but after a while the old ones start to sound bad in my opinion.