How to Change Guitar Strings

Changing guitar strings might seem tricky. If you're only starting out to play the guitar, this might seem intimidating and complicated for you. But this is a skill that you must acquire and something that you as an guitarists must master. It's not a hard thing to do, it's actually pretty simple. 

Now I take it that because you are reading this, something happened while you were playing. Or maybe you simply heard a "plonk" and not really sure what that sound was, you had a look around and found out that it came from you're guitar. It's common that only one guitar string break at a time.

And because of this you go ahead and change the broken guitar string and continue playing.. WRONG. Don't go mixing old and new guitar strings. This will ruin the sound of you're guitar. It's nothing that will hurt you're guitar. It's more that the sound of the old strings and one new will not sound good at all.

That's why guitarist always change all the strings when the change their guitar strings. And so should you. Sure it's a bit more expencive but we are only talking about $5 - $10 so it's nothing really. That new guitar string sound can't be beat. It will give new life to you're guitar, and will also affect you and you're playing because it sound so good. When you go and buy new strings, you can also try and buy a couple of different brands. Because some guitars sound better with other makes of strings. But this is something that you will need to play around with.

Before you start make sure that you have you're new strings and a guitar tuner. If you don't have a guitar tuner, I would recommend you get one. Or you can have a look at some of the videos how to tune you're guitar. This will help you get the guitar in tune once you're done. Also a good tool to have is a peg winder. You don't need a peg winder but it saves time to have one.

Now go ahead and turn you're tuning pegs down to loosen up the guitar strings. This can take some time to get all the strings loose enough so you can remove them if you don't have the peg winder. Take note how the guitar strings are fastened down at the bridge of the guitar. Some guitars have bridge pins, now these can be very stubborn to get out. There are bridge pin pullers that you can buy to help you with this. But some people simply use pliers to pull them out. You need to be very carefull if you do use pliers because you can easily damage the bridge pins and saddle if you do. You can also push the bridge pins out from the inside. You need to loosen the guitar strings so much that you can stick you're hand inside the guitar if you are doing it that way. You can use a penny or something hard to help you push the pins out.

Some guitar strings have "nuts" or something at the end that will allow them to just slide in place so that they are fastened. This is more common with electric guitars that use steel strings. But some makers don't have this, if that's the case you need to "tie" the guitar strings at the bridge. The picture below is from a classical guitar that use nylon guitar strings.

Guitar string order E-6 A-5 D-4 G-3 B-2 E-1

It's much easier to change the guitar strings on a guitar with nylon strings, because they will come of easy and you only need to tie the guitar strings back. If you look close you only need to stick the strings in from the top and then twist around 2-3 times. Then when you start to tighten the tuning pegs the strings will lock in place down at the bridge.


You can go ahead and clean you're fretboard and get all that dirt of the guitar when you have the guitar strings off. It's much easier and if you look close at the frets you probably will see some dirt that's collected over time. This is skin oil, skin and dirt that you have there. You can use some fretboard cleaner and polish to get that nice look back to you're guitar. If you don't have anything handy you can do it afterwards also, but it's much easier to do when the strings are off the guitar. Don't use water when cleaning or any other household cleaners. Some say you could use citric acid, but this will dry out the fretboard. I have used a little cooking oil or olive oil on my guitars fretboard. And it worked very well. But I would not put anything else on the guitar, because the wood will soak up anything and if done wrong this will damage the guitar.


Put the guitar strings back in the right order. The thickest gauge guitar string is called E-6 this one is the first string you see when looking down at you're guitar when you are playing. And then it goes down to the thinest string that also is a E string but called E-1. So the order is E A D G B E. Have a look at the picture above and you can see how it should look if done right.


Putting the strings back is pretty easy, put the stings back in the tuners and turn you're tuning pegs. Try and get the guitar strings to lock in place so that they don't slip. And try and get the winding to look good. If it looks good it will sound good. And also give more life to you're new strings. 

Tune the guitar up to tune. Put some tension on all the strings and then tune one at a time. Now this is where that guitar tuner will come in handy. Because you would not want to overtune the guitar because you can snap a string if you go to far. So have a look at some videos and try an listen to how the tune should be and you will be alright. Have a look at the video of Tommy Emmanuel that I have here for you:
Tommy Emmanuel - String Talk

Tommy Emmanuel gives some very good advice for you how to tune and get the stretch out of you're guitar strings.