How to Change Strings on Acoustic Guitar

In this video, I wanna show you how to change the strings on your acoustic guitar and when you should do so. Now I always feel a little guilty when I see other videos of how to change the strings on your acoustic guitar, and they have it all set up nicely on a table and they take up a whole room of space for doing this, and I've never changed my strings on a guitar like that at all. I just simply sit on a chair and er do it this way. In this fashion, basically no table needed, so I'm gonna show you how I do it, uh, watch the chaos ensue, but when should you change your strings? Well, you should change your strings not only when there is visible wear and tear, like blackened strings and visible rust, and not only when slightly rusty or even just mildly oxidising strings start to be felt under your fingers. And you can notice it's kind of hampering your guitar playing and not sounding good, and also another hint is when your guitar is struggling to stay in tune or being harder to get in tune, just taking a little longer than normal. Those are all signs that your strings are needing a change, and unless you're using something like some coated strings or some more premium. Strings, it's probable that you might want to be changing your strings up to around every 3 months if it's in the house, and anytime any professional musician does a gig and performs on stage, they've probably changed the strings pre-gig, either the same day or the day before. So this is something, at some point, we're gonna need to change your strings. Also if you break one string. Be sure to change the whole set is a good rule of thumb. And how can we do that? Well, there's a couple of tools we'll need, you'll need some snips, some wire cutters, we'll want a tuner to get ourselves back in tune. I also really like to use a string winder as well, which comes with a snip included, but also, we're gonna need some strings. I'm an Ernie Ball guy, I really recommend Ernie Ball stuff. Their standard acoustic guitar strings are these earthwood strings, pigs. Uh, the more premium version, I really like for many reasons, just from personal experience, I really prefer the coated strings. From any brand of strings, I really recommend going for the coated version. They just last months to years longer, especially when just used in the home, and most of the time, most of my guitars are kept in this room. It just means I have to change fewer strings of all these guitars less often. Whatever strings you get, you're going to have to choose a gauge. Or thickness of that string, which is called many things, uh, this is called medium light, uh, the ones that I'm using, it is 12 to 54, which is quite a medium or common guitar gauge. So let's make a start, let's do this, and I'm gonna start from string 6. I'm gonna recommend changing one string at a time so that you can see what's happening with the winding of the other strings, but remove all your strings if you want to treat the fretboard or just clean your guitar as basic maintenance as might be needed. But first of all. Let's take down. String 6, a little bit to remove some of the tension, so it's a little bit loosey loosey. And then we're going to snip it. Now is where this tool comes in real handy, because not only does it snip the wires, not only does it uh wind the strings a lot quicker than you can by hand, but it includes this bridge pin remover, which these are our bridge pins here and these need to be removed so that we can take out the string, and if we slide it in just like this. And it pops out like that, keep hold of that guitar string before it disappears into your guitar, keep hold of the bridge pin, put it somewhere safe. Unwind and we've removed one guitar string. What I then like to do is roll this round my hand. And then roll it within itself, which is kind of like how a guitar string comes, and that's ready to be thrown away, no reason to keep any old guitar strings, unless you wanna make some nice jewellery or something. Uh, but let's get our new guitar strings out, our unboxing video, woo, opening video. Alright, so these come in their own little individual packs, which is best, and 54 is the thickest string, so I'm gonna take this one out and put all the old string. Both sections. In there to be thrown away and keep that safe. Open this up, then we have two ends of the string, one which doesn't have anything on and then one that has this ring on it. Take the side with the ring, kink it just a little bit. Not a lot, just put a little angle in it, place the side with the ring inside the hole a little bit. Push the peg in or the bridge pin in. Pull it up a little bit. And that's seeming pretty tight, so that's pretty good, and I can now tug that string a little bit and that's not coming out. Then what I like to do, keep a hold of the end of the uh guitar string, but grab the neck, move that onto the floor, be mindful of the end of the string going anywhere near your face, but what we can do is pin. This part of the string here. And then put this through uh the hole, what I like to do is a single wind. Around the peg here. And then thread it through the hole. Make sure the string is then placed back in. This is a great point to put any uh pencil lead in there if you wish, but this guitar doesn't really need it. The string winder comes in real handy now cause it makes this part a lot quicker, but do try and make sure that it's not gonna roll off while you're doing this. Once it's getting a little bit tighter. Now's quite a good time to just give it a little tug here at the bridge. Here it moved a little bit, and also at this side as well, just to work out any of the little kinks, which will help it stay in tune when we get up to full pitch. A nice rule of thumb is you want it to be in tune with string six. And that pretty much is, and even though the whole guitar will need. A quick tune up. Chop off the end, put that end also in the bag where all your spars were. And that is the rough and ready guide as to how to change a single guitar string. And that process just gets repeated for all the other strings. Things to watch out for is winding the same way around these 3. Uh, tuning pegs, machine heads, and then the same way around at these 3 and making sure that's the right way around. A lot to think about while you're keeping hold of the string and making sure it doesn't fall off, but that's the way around, and you're looking for about 3 turns. Then just tune up as you usually would, and you're ready to go. The strings may go out of tune, uh, a lot quicker over the first few times that you play them, over the first like 15 minutes or so, but 15 minutes of playing and you should be good to go.