Well, I figured out what the deal is with fixing guitar strings and it turns out not to be too bad.
A recap: Back in August I broke my E string while trying to play something particularly uncomplicated. I couldn’t figure out how to get the string out of the botom of the guitar.
So the past Sunday while at the chili cookoff (article and pictures to come) I stopped in at Taylor’s music in Westchester to get some new strings. After giving the clerk my best guess at the type of guitar I have, he sold me a full set of strings for under $6. I was expecting more, really. The trial was yet to begin, though.
When I got home, I brought out the guitar and tried to make sense of getting the old broken string out. It was no simple task since the string had broken so close to the bottom. After looking at the new strings, though, I figured out what was going on.
As I began to suspect after writing my last article, guitar strings come with a little rivet-like thing wound onto the end. The eyelet on the guitar that the string is threaded through is not big enough to allow this rivet to pass through, thus holding the string into the base. When you wind the string on the peg, it simply pulls the string taught.
As I said, the tricky part was removing the old string, which I had to do with my pocketknife pliers. I removed the board from the back of the guitar, which was only necessary because there is a gap between the holes that are there for this purpose and the metal restraint that holds the string. I was afraid that the small piece of string would fall into the guitar somewhere. If a string breaks in the future I might not need to do this.
Also, when I need to restring again, I’ll need to remember that the string kinks easily, which made it difficult this time to wind the string properly after I fastened it at first in the wrong direction. No big deal, and not as stupid as it sounds, but a mistake I won’t want to make again.
I found directions on the net for winding guitar strings. Acoustic guitars wind the same way as electric, it seems. The major missing part was the bit about hooking in the bottom, because acoustic guitars seem very different in this respect.
After the guitar was restrung, I had to tune everything significantly. But the whole guitar sounded better with the new strings. Neat!
