How to Change Electric Guitar Strings + MUST DO Cleaning Care

Hey, guitar enthusiast Lauren Bateman here. And in this video we're going to go over some maintenance cleaning of an electric guitar as well as how to change the strings on your electric guitar. So let's get started.

Now make sure you stick around to the end of this video because I'm going to go over a secret that people tend to forget to do when they change their strings. And then they're wondering why their guitar sounds so funny after putting a fresh set of strings on. So make sure to stay through to the end of this video. So the first thing we need to do before we actually clean the guitar is we need to remove these strings from our actual electric. So I have this little wind up tool and any of the tools and items that I'm using in this video, I'll put a link in the description below so you can go and check them out. But all it is, you can either hand unwind here at the tuning pegs or this makes it really nice and easy because you can just really quickly wind. So what I'm going to do very fast is I'm going to take these strings off and. And the next time I see you, I'll have the fretboard wide open to work on.

Okay. So what I've done is I've pretty much loosened and undone all the strings on the top here where the tuning pegs are. For most electrics, you're going to be able to slide the strings out of the back. See, there's a hole here. Some guitars, it's easier to take the plate off, but I think with this one it's super easy. You can just slide them through. You'll see the string come through and then you can either just pull it through or if you have a string cutter like I do, that little tool, it has a string cutter. You can cut the string and then just pull it out the other side. Super easy. So that's what I usually end up doing. So I'm going to pull all the strings out and then we're going to talk about how we're going to clean the fretboard of our guitar.

A little tip, just in case your strings are getting stuck. So sometimes if they've been in there a little while, they don't always come through so easily. So. So you can get. I have a paper clip here and you can push the paper clip through and it pushes the ball on the other end of the string through and then you can loosen up and grab it on the other side. All right, so I've taken all the strings off of my guitar. And what I'm going to do first is this Dunlop kit. I don't know if you guys saw earlier, I have this Dunlop guitar maintenance kit has microfiber cloth. So what I would do is I would just wipe down the guitar because there's going to be dust and stuff around your pickups and we just want to clean that out. We want to get the dust around my tuning pegs up here. Especially if you haven't changed them in a while, the dust will collect. Okay. And then once you've done that, what we're gonna do and what I recommend is putting a towel or something. I just have a workout bench, but I would put a towel or something underneath your guitar. Now we're not going to be working on working on adjusting the intonation or adjusting the neck here. We're just going to be talking about actually cleaning up the guitar and restringing it. So the first product that I'm going to use on this is the Dunlop the fingerboard one. And this works great as long as you don't have a maple top. It says it on. It don't use it on a maple top. And basically just spray it on. And it takes off all of the sweat and the grease from your fingers and always support the neck of your guitar. So you might have to get in here and scrub it a little bit. But you're gonna see it's gonna take off some nasty stuff. So let's clean up the whole fingerboard.

So you might have to do that two or three times to get it really, really clean. And what we're gonna do next is we're gonna use the second step of the application, which is the 02. This is the actual oil that goes on the fretboard. Now if you have like a clear coat, like a really high gloss polish, you'll be able to clean the fretboard, but won't be able to use the oil because the oil is not gonna be able to. You've got that clear coat. But as you can see, my guitar does not have a shiny clear coat. So I'm going to be able to put this oil on the frets. And all you do is you press down on the applicator and I'll show you. I don't know if you can see on that first fret. It's probably a little darker, a little more moist. And all this does is condition the fret, especially up by these top three frets where you're playing so much it can dry out. So we want to keep getting moisture into our fingerboard. So it's important every time you change your strings, I would recommend putting a little bit of this oil conditioner on your guitar just to get some moisture in. And all I'm doing is I'm going in between the frets and making sure to pay special attention, getting close to the actual fret because that tends to be where it starts drying out the first. And you don't want your guitar drying out, because if your guitar does dry out, I'll show you a picture above what a dried out guitar looks like. And if it gets too bad, your frets can start popping off your guitar. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to oil up the whole fretboard and then I'm going to get into how we're going to polish it and then we're going to get into how to string it up.

Okay. So you're probably going to see that my fretboard looks a lot more colorized. You can see the sheen on it from the oil. So I'm just going to let the oil sit for a little bit. We're going to wipe off the excess later, but I want some of it I want to absorb into the wood. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to start with the guitar polish and we're actually going to polish up this area of the guitar because it's easier to do when you don't have your strings on. So basically I'm just going to polish the body of the guitar and I'm also going to polish the headstock and the back, get all the grease off, and then we're going to come back, wipe the oil off and finally restring our guitar. So let's get started. At this point, I would use my microfiber cloth and again I'm just going to spray a little bit on the guitar and then rub it onto the finish.

And go very gently. And that's why we want to use a microfiber cloth so that we don't, you know, we don't scratch things because we want to take care of our guitar. So I'm going to polish this baby up nice and when I come back, we'll take the oil off and get the guitar strung.

All right, So I give my girl a nice polish here. You can probably see she's got a nice shine to her now on the body of the guitar. Looking nice. So what we're going to do, like I said, we're just going to Take. I would use a paper towel because we're going to wipe off the extra oil. And I would inspect the guitar because there could be parts, especially if you haven't done this before, there could be parts that are drier. And you might want to do a second application, especially up here on the first, second, and third frets. Just check around those fret markers. You might want to do a second application, but I think we're good to go here on this one. And let's talk about getting her strung up. Hey, guys, I hope you're enjoying this video. Make sure to leave a like. And don't forget to subscribe below and always leave me a comment. Say hello. Love getting comments from you guys. So let's get into how to string the guitar. Now, a common question people ask me is how often they should do this. And I recommend doing it, you know, a couple times a year, if you can. There are some people that leave their strings on forever and never change them, but I recommend doing it, you know, at least once a year. This way you can condition the fretboard just like we did. So the guitar strings I'm going to use today, I'm actually going to use a slightly different one than I usually use, but I always use Diadarial brand. And these are going to be the light tops and the regular bottom. So I like using light strings on my guitars for bends. It's easier for me to bend with an electric guitar using a lighter string, but you'll always get a better sound on your thicker strings, the thicker they are. So that's why this one's kind of like a hybrid string. So it's the. It's the bottom three strings of these.

Sorry. It's the bottom three of this one, the light strings. So it's the bottom 3, 9, 11, and 16. And then it's the top three strings of this. So it's a mixture of two of these. I'll usually just use these, but I'm trying something new today, and I'm going to see how it sounds. Strings are always a personal preference, so definitely try out different strings and see which ones you like. I've just always used these, and I haven't changed my mind. So these are the coated nickel exp. Coated nickel. The great thing about the d' Addario strings, not all strings do this, but they have a color grid on the back to let you know what string is, what color. Obviously, the thickest string goes on the top, the thinnest on the bottom. But just in case you need A little extra help. They do color coat. So I pulled out the two thickest strings, which is our red and I guess our brass colored. And we're just going to unwind them. Now when you're stringing a guitar, be very careful because the ends here, especially on the thinner strings, can be very sharp. So just be super careful when you're working with the strings. And we want to unwind them and then make sure they're safe. We don't want to get any kinks in them. And we're going to start with this brass one since that is the thickest string here. So that is our thick E string. Now if you have an electric like mine with the bridge, the hole in the back, we're just gonna slide the string through the hole in the back. Alright. So I don't know if you can see that. I've just run my string through the hole for the thick E string and I'm gonna pull it all the way through until that little pin locks into place. And then what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna run the string up the fretboard, okay. And you'll see up here in this nut there's a slot, that's where your E string goes into. So what we're gonna do is we're going to put the string through the hole in the tuning peg, this E tuning peg. And I like it so that the holes are facing, one's facing me, one's facing out so that I can put the string through this way. Then what I like to do is I like to get it started. So I like to leave enough looseness on the string so that I can wind it, but not too much because you don't want to be winding the string all the way from down here. So I like to leave enough for me to do one loop over the top of the tuning peg. And let's see if I can do that. Did I leave enough? Yes, I did. Okay, so I like to do it this way. I like to get one loop going.

Over the top and then I'm going to wind the rest of it underneath this little bend. So let me see if I can get in for a little bit of a close up here. Pick up my guitar and let's see. There it goes. It zoomed in. All right, so you see, I've done one round around the top and now the rest of it I'm going to wind underneath this little tab because it's going to now lock the string into place. So watch when it comes around See, here's my string. And now look, I'm going to wind under that. And I've now locked the string into place. It's not going to slide out, it's not going to go anywhere. And then I will.

Get all the slack up. I continue to wind and I won't go all the way. I'll just get a little bit of tension on the string. And then all I'm going to do is just repeat that for another string. I'll show you one more string. Alright, Since I have one out here, we'll do one more string and then I'm going to string the rest and we'll get it into two. So we're going to go to the back of our guitar. I'm going to find the next hole for the A string and I'm just going to slide it through, pull it through here until it comes all the way through so it's tight. And then I'm going to come up to the headstock here and like I said, just going to loop it through the hole towards me.

Okay.

And just going to leave. So I don't want to leave all of this slack or I'm going to be winding for a while and I'm going to do my one loop over and then the rest.

I'm going to wind up here. Okay.

And I'm going to roll, wind this underneath the strings. All right. So each wind is working its way down the tuning peg. That's why it's in this little bit of a cone shape. Because what we're doing is we're gonna lock in the strings. And I probably left a little more slack on this one than I usually do, but that's okay.

What we do here, when we get all this slack again, be careful, don't hit yourself in the eye. This tool, you can see it here, has a little wire cutter on the end. So what I like to do is I like to bend the wire up, bend the string up, and then I like to cut it so it's nice and clean. I get it as close to the tuning peg as possible. Okay. I bend it up.

As close as possible. I like nice, clean cuts on my pegs. So what I'm going to do, I'm going to finish stringing the other four strings and then we're going to get this baby in tune and make sure she's sounding good. Okay. So I've used my winding tool and I've trimmed up all of the strings that are hanging off here. And the last thing we need to do is grab a tuner and we're going to tune all of the strings. And hopefully you'll see there I have some tension on the strings, but I didn't really tighten them up all the way. And a lot of times when people after they first string their guitars, sometimes they break strings because they go too far. So go very slow when you're tuning your guitar. So I'm going to tune this up and we'll talk about the last step you have to do after you put a new set of strings on. Now, just in reference to tuning, because people like, how do I know when I'm going too far?

Just feel the tent. The strings gonna feel tight, but not feel like it's flapping all over the place, especially on these lower strings. So I got this in E and my. The tension on my string is tight enough but loose enough. If it feels like it's really tight, then you've probably gone too far. So, like this string, I really got to go up. But you'll get a feel for the tension the more you do this as to what's kind of the right pressure. Because if you go too far, you definitely will snap a string.

See, like that one. I think I'm too far. But the worst case scenario is you go all the way down and the string becomes really flimsy. So it's easy to go down and come back up. I wasn't too far on that.

So there I am. So that's it. If you're ever concerned, go lower. Go lower first before you go higher, because as soon as you go lower, the strings are going to get super loose and flimsy, and that's going to tell you you're going the wrong direction. So let me finish tuning up this guitar. I'm going to show you that final step. Okay, So I fully tuned my guitar now, and you think you're ready and set to go. Now, the thing with new strings is they have a lot more elasticity in them than old strings. And that's why you want to change your strings. Because newer strings sound much better because of that elasticity. But the thing is, if you put this on and you start and you start strumming, it'll sound great. But in a few minutes, it's probably going to go out of tune because we need to stretch out our strings. So the one thing people do, they put the new strings on, they think they're all set to go. You got to stretch them. So what I usually do is I take the guitar and I'm not yanking the string off. I usually just. I stretch it. I pull it away from the fretboard a little bit, and it's going to take a little bit of the stretch out of the strings. And you'll probably have to do this a few times, maybe three or four times, depending on how you tuned it. And now watching it play again.

It'S actually not too bad. But I'm going to go back and tune it again because I bet it's out of tune. So that wasn't too bad. Actually, it was my top two strings that were the worst. They were way out of tune. So I'm going to do those two again. Actually. I'm going to do them all again and stretch it out. It's just a little pull. I'm not yanking. If you yank it, you will break a string, especially the lower strings. So just do that a few times, tune it up, and then you'll really be ready to go. So I hope you guys enjoyed this video on how to change the strings on an electric guitar. Don't forget to, like, comment and subscribe. And if you enjoyed this video, a couple more are going to pop up over here. Feel free to check those out. Like I said, I'm going to put all the links to all of the products and stuff that I use today in this video below. So go check those out and I hope to see you guys in another lesson video.