Chords for How to Change Your Electric Guitar Strings | Fender

_ _ _ _ [D] _ _ [B] _ [A] _
[G] _ _ Hey, _ [E] this is John Dreyer for Fender University.
I'd like to show you one method to change the strings on your electric guitar.
Before we get started, let's go over the materials that you'll need.
So we have our wire clippers, our string winder, and your choice of Fender strings.
[C#] There's a few reasons why you might want to change the strings on your guitar.
The obvious reasons are that they just might look dirty or sound dull, or you may have
broken a string and now you feel it's a good time to change the whole entire set.
I want to begin by loosening the tension of the strings.
I'm going to grab my string winder.
I'm going to loosen the tension of all the strings so that when I clip them, I don't
want them to bounce back _ [E] and hurt me.
One by one here.
_ And you can see I've got some good play in these strings.
So now I'm ready to clip them.
So I'm going to grab my string clippers here.
_ Clip these. _ _
Just holding on to them with my left hand, because I want to make sure that I can just
grab all these at one time.
Unwind them from the pegs.
And I'm just going to _ wrap these up _ so _ they don't go all over the place.
And just like so.
And then get rid of those.
I'm going to grab the rest of these strings here that are still fed through the body.
I'm going to flip the guitar over on its side.
I've already removed the back plate here so you can see the bridge block, which is where
the strings are fed through.
_ So I'm just going to push these forward [D] _ _
and pull them through.
_ _ Okay, so all the strings are out.
I'm just going to go ahead and flip this back over.
Now's a good time to take a look at your fretboard [C#] if you need conditioning or cleaning.
This would be a good time to do it now that all the strings are off.
This one looks pretty good, so we'll move forward.
Okay, now we're ready to install the new set of strings.
I have my Fender nickel-plated steel strings here.
This is a set of nines. _ _
As you can see, Fender makes it easy for you to know which string goes where by adding
this handy-dandy string guide, color-coded by Ball-Ends.
I'm going to be careful opening this [D#] up.
I'm going to leave the guide part of the label _ kind of clean so I can refer to it if
I need it.
Okay, I'm going to start with the lowest string here, which is the _ brass or gold Ball-End.
Now this American Standard Strat has a vintage-style bridge, so it feeds through the back of the
bridge block and _ it comes up through the saddles.
_ Now if you were stringing up a Telecaster, obviously it does not have a tremolo.
You would just have a solid back [A] with the six individual grommets.
You would just be feeding the string through each grommet.
And then repeat the process.
_ _ _ _ [G] _
[E] _ All the strings are now running through the block and through the bridge, and now we are
ready to attach the strings to the machine heads.
And I'm going to start with the lowest string here.
I'm going to grab my clippers.
So now when I'm attaching the string to the machine head, to the peg, I don't want too
many windings on the machine head.
I don't want to give too many possibilities of slipping at a tune.
It's a good rule of thumb on an electric guitar.
I'm just going to measure up two machine heads from the one I'm attaching it to.
So one, two.
That's a good length to start with.
So on this American Standard, these are modern-style machine heads.
I'm going to feed the string through the hole on the peg.
I'm going to pull back and give it some tension and hold down on the string.
And you can see it's not slipping.
It's being held in place.
So I'm going to grab my string winder _ and I'm going to start turning so that the windings
are incoming from the right side of the tuner.
_ And the last winding will be on the bottom of the peg to give it proper alignment over the nut.
[N] _ _
And I'm not going to tune this to pitch.
I'm just going to wind it enough so _ everything is in place and holds snugly.
And as I mentioned, for the wound strings, you don't want to overlap the strings in the peg.
But actually for the unwound strings, you want to have your first winding above the
inserted string on the peg and the second below.
This will hold the string in place and the strings are thin enough that it won't affect tuning.
[A] _ _ _ [E] _ _ [F#] _ [A]
[D] On the last string here, everything seems to be lining up.
And I do want to mention that if you end up with some extra string hanging out, just go
ahead and clip it off.
[E] So as I mentioned before, this American Standard Stratocaster features modern style machine heads.
Now your guitar might have classic or vintage style machine heads, which is something a
little bit different.
And let's take a look.
So here I am working with an American Vintage Stratocaster.
And this guitar features the vintage style tuner.
_ _ I'm going to feed the string [A#] through.
[E]
I'm going to measure up two machine heads just like I did with the last one.
I'm going to clip it off, except this time _ I'm going to insert the string into the tuner
_ until it hits the bottom there.
And then I'm going to pull it around to the right, _ wrap it around, _ _ apply some pressure,
hold it down, and start winding.
Again, I want the last wrap to end on the bottom of the peg to ensure proper alignment
over the nut.
_ [D] So now that I have all six strings on the guitar and everything seems to be in the right
place, I'm ready to tune it up to pitch and start playing.
_ [Bm] _ [A] _ _ _ [E] _ _ [D] _ _ _ [N] _