Restringing An Electric Guitar Part 2

Demystifying the restringing process for electric guitar. Part 2 of 2.

Now, I am going to show you is a Gibson Style electric guitar restringing, Gibson style electric guitar like a less power 335. This is obviously a beautiful PRS that I am playing, but it has a tune-o-matic bridge which is really the Gibson style bridge, and this is probably easier than restringing Fender Guitars. I am at the second string that I am just taking off here. And you could use a string winder; there are string, peg winders that help wind that you can buy in any music store. Those are definitely worth getting one, but I am just doing it by hand in this demonstration. So I am taking the string, the old string out. Now, this string actually doesn't go through the body on a Gibson style. It actually winds from the -- it's actually from the hole in the bottom of the bridge, and it wraps around the top. So I am just taking the old string out, taking the new string, in this case the B string has the purple ball end and I have unwound it. I am being careful again not to kink the string at all. So if you have a Gibson style guitar, here's what you want to do. See the hole down here in the bridge. I am going to feed the plain end through that hole, bring it all the way through until the ball end catches in it, and then just simply bring it over the top. So that's pretty intuitive. That's pretty simple. You just want to make sure that you have got the ball end all the way through there, and it catches in the bridge that will slot properly there. Then once I had over to the peg over here, I have got the hole in the peg. So I am just winding it, and putting it through from the inside of the headstock to the outside like that. In this case, these aren't locking tuner. So what I am going to do is take this tag end of the string like this. I am going to bring it over this way and then under the string like that, and then over. And what that does is, it creates a little connection there where it's just like looping on top of itself. So it really -- as I bring the tension down on the string and turn the tuner, it's going to actually lock the string onto the tuner itself. That can be a little tricky at first. Just practice that a few times, and then really just winding it up. I have left enough slack in the string that I have got maybe four inches of slack here to wind up. This is where a guitar tuner would actually, the peg winder would come in handy as you can tell. Not very exciting to watch a guy turn a guitar tuner for 30 seconds, but I think we're almost done. Okay. So there it is, and the last thing I will do is just stretch out the string. So you are just going to kind of pull the string out just a little bit, not too hard obviously it will break the string, but strings when they are new, need to stretch out. Then, one last thing you can do with the tag end of the string here if you don't have a wire clipper, you can take a pick and just pull the pick, pull the string along the edge of the pick like this, it winds it up, and don't poke yourself with that string end, and so that's restringing a Gibson style guitar. And the movement for verse is E, kind of trademark drop which is just going to the major third of the B. Now, we go into the pre-chorus and it just mirrors that phrase or that voice right there. It starts on the open E string and just goes.