Bend & Lock Your New Guitar Strings

Video Transcript

"MATT GRAHAM: Okay, so I've got the right amount of slack in my string. I've got my three fingers underneath at the 12th fret, and I'm going to remove those three fingers and still keep this finger down at the nut so that the string maintains that right amount of slack in. What I mean by the right amount of slack is once we start winding the string around the post, we're going to lock it down by this technique I'm about to show you. And it's only going to go around the post once or twice instead of six or eight times, and that's going to create less string--excess string that's wrapped around the post that I'll have to stretch out. So now, what we're going to do since all of these tuners are on the same side of the headstock, they're on this left side of the headstock, we're going to take this string and we're going to wrap it around clockwise, okay? Inserting it underneath the string between the nut and the tuning post. So you pull it tight so that it kinks and you're underneath the string, and then you're going to pull it back the opposite direction over that string. And what that's doing is creating--basically this string is going to lock down on itself. It's okay if you need to switch fingers. Now that you've created that kink, you've kinda locked off the right amount of slack that you need. So now I'm going to switch my fingers and pull it on the round. And then when I start rotating the tuner counter-clockwise, it's going to cause the tuning post to also spin counter-clockwise. And if you look right here as it comes around, the string is going to kink across itself, and that's what's creating our lock so that that string is not going to slip as we tighten it up. Even though there's not multiple wraps around that tuning post, it still not going to slip because we've locked it off. There the strings are already tight, and there's only one wrap around it."