How to Restring Your Guitar

Video Transcript

"Hi. My name is Steve Anthony. I'm a musician, actor, singer based in New York and Miami. And in this clip, we're going to talk about how to restring a guitar. And I have to, because I just broke a string. Okay, not to worry. We have tools for this. In this case, I have this multi-tool, which if you don't have one and you're a guitar player, go get one. It serves a number of functions. It's got a tuner built into it. Really neat. It's got a clipper, so you can cut your string ends off. I'll show you that in a minute. And it's got a peg winder over here for tuning. But it's also got a nice, little thing here to release your bridge pin, which is the first thing you have to do when you're changing a string. Pop out that bridge pin, take out your broken string, and unwind it from the peg head, and get rid of it. It's broken. It has no more purpose for us. So we take our new string out of the package. This one happens to be the 6th E string. And this is a medium gage string. So it'll look something like this when we take it out of the package. So we unwind it, place the ball end into the whole in the bridge plate, the bridge saddle there, and put your peg back in. Push it down firmly. Run the string through the nut. A couple of turns, maybe just two turns around the peg. And carefully run the string through the hole. Snug it up. Give it a couple of turns. You want to take up all that slack. And that'll naturally happen as the tension goes to the string. And that's where this peg winder comes in really handy, as you slip this right over the end of the tuning peg and give it a spin. And gradually, the string, slack will be taken up. And now we've changed a string on the guitar. Now we can re-tune it and get back to the business of playing. I'm Steve Anthony, and this has been how to restring a guitar."