Blog 3: Cleaning and Restringing Guitars

Since the beginning of my musical journey, Guitar and bass were my two primary instruments. Despite this, I still have much to learn in terms of both my playing skills as well as maintenance. During my Internship at Neverending studios, I’ve furthered my journey as a guitarist by learning how to properly clean and restring both Acoustic and Electric guitars.

Acoustic 1

Before I was able to do work on Rob’s collection of guitars, he gave me the opportunity to try cleaning and restringing my own acoustic guitar, which I’ve had since elementary school. After showing me how to measure the relief of the guitar, he set me lose to clean and restring it. Cleaning was a breeze. I learned how to properly use the appropriate oils to clean the fretboard, headstock, and body. My first go at restringing proved to be fairly difficult. After applying first two strings correctly, I accidentally wound the D string and the B string in reverse, which caused major problems with tuning the guitar. I also broke several strings in the process, so I needed to ask for a few spares. The acoustic guitar also  proved to be difficult due to the bridge pins. It took several tries to get the ball ends of the strings to properly seat against the bridge plate without popping out due to tension. This short project showed me where I need to grow when it comes to my guitar maintenance skills, as well as the unique issues of restringing an acoustic guitar.

Other guitars 

A few weeks later, Rob set me loose on a variety of electric and acoustic guitars. When I began work on his collection, I noticed how electric guitars make the process much easier. A couple of the guitars, namely the Danolectro 6 and the Fender Stratocaster had much easier paths for inserting the strings, primarily holes in the bridge and the back of the guitar respectively. The Fender Stratocaster I restrung was equipped with locking tuners, which meant I didn’t need to wind the string around the peg, but rather insert and lock it. When restringing the acoustic Epiphone AJ 45, I ran into similar issues as before with the bridge pegs, but had minimal issues with winding the strings themselves.

Overall, I think this experience has helped me build my skills in guitar maintenance. I now know how to fully clean and restring a guitar, achieving the proper, clean sound needed for performance or tracking. I still sometimes find trouble with identifying the correct strings, and winding the thinner strings is fairly difficult for me, but I am satisfied with the lessons I learned, including but not limited to; keeping an extra set of strings nearby in case of breakage, using paper to protect the pickups during cleaning, and proper methods for achieving the tightest knots around the tuning pegs.