The Stewardship Series: Restringing Guitars and Basses
The Stewardship Series is all about helping us to think about how we can present musical instruments and equipment to our students in a way that inspires awe, wonder, and respect. The Gig Based Learning maxims of “Always Out, Always On”, “A Place for Everything and Everything in its Place”, and “A Clean Stage is a Happy Stage” are captured by our core maxim of “Music at the Speed of Thought”.
In the Stewardship Series, we’ll break down our maxims and give you practical tips on how you can make your music classroom a space where students create “Music at the Speed of Thought”.
Restringing Guitars and Basses
How Often Should You Change Strings?
Once you’ve followed our guides below, play the low E string of the guitars and basses. Hear that beautiful, bright, metallic, bitey sound (insert tone colour/ timbre words from your syllabus here)? We call it the “ank” sound. There comes a point in the life of a string when there’s no “ank” left in the string and instead of “ank” you get “duh”. That’s the time to change the strings. You can push this moment back by having students sanitise their hands before they play and by wiping the strings down with a lint-free cloth regularly.
But, once you develop an ear for “ank” you might find that keeping your strings fresh becomes prohibitively expensive. So, we’d love you to change guitar and bass strings at least annually. An approach that has worked for us is to start the year with a fresh set of strings on all of your instruments and buy an extra set of strings for any instruments that will be used for big public events or important exams like the HSC in NSW. If you replace strings on your HSC guitar and basses for the Trial HSC they’ll be in pretty good shape for the HSC exam and the end of year public performances too.
Strings We Dig (from our Gear Page)
Guitar Strings: Nylon/Classical - Leeofty 6 Nylon Strings (Economic option for classroom guitars)
Guitar Strings: Nylon/Classical - Ernie Ball Ernesto Palla Nylon Tie On Set (Premium option for performance guitars)
Guitar String: Nylon/Classical - Ernie Ball P02409 Ernesto Palla Nylon Ball End Set, Black & Gold (Ball end at the bridge for those who would rather not learn that knot)
Guitar Strings: Steel String Acoustic - Ernie Ball Earthwood 80/20 Medium Lights
Guitar Strings: Steel String Acoustic - Elixer Phospher Bronze with Nanoweb Coating (The extra coating tends to stave off the teenage grease for a bit longer but you do pay for it)
Guitar Strings: Electric - Ernie Ball Regular Slinky 10 - 46
Guitar Strings: Bass - Ernie Ball Hybrid Slinky 45 - 105
Tools (from our Gear Page)
Guitar Polish: No matter how often you are able to change strings, please always take the opportunity to polish the guitar with guitar polish before you put that new set on! We have a couple of products we like on our gear page like this one from Ernie Ball.
String Cutter/Winder: Ain’t nobody got time to wind strings without a string winder and you have to cut the strings too. So, why not get two tools in one? Check our gear page or just go straight to our favourite guitar string winder/cutter and bass string cutter/winder. If you have access to a drill, there are drill bit attachments or if you’ve run out of things to buy and still have budget leftover, go fully automated with the ROADIE 3. Now you’re ready!
Changing Strings Tutorials
We’ve collated our favourite classical/nylon string, acoustic steel string, electric guitar, and bass guitar YouTube videos to help you keep your strings fresh below:
