Advice on Removing Existing Strings and Re-Stringing

I leave both Es on clean all around then. Put the A or B on then remove the Es

 

I would only consider changing one string at a time on guitar equipped with a floating bridge.

 

I usually do them one string at a time, using a string winder to carefully loosen each in turn before carefully removing it. Sometimes I’ll do them all at once on a solid body, if I’m in a hurry.

But when I ran a music store 40 years ago, I’d always grab the side cutters and snip-snip-snip-snip-snip-snip. This was occasionally traumatic to some sensitive guitar owners. Time is money, you know. ​

 

Hi.

Well, I can’t speak for everyone else who voted one string at a time, but I suspect refitting the fruit work* happens by doing the stuff necessary for it. Which is of course, not necessarily the same stuff necessary for simply changing strings.

Pax/
Dean
* for kicks, I tried replying with voice recognition. Be thankful my phone’s not delivering your parcels, I guess…

 

Just cutting them all off at once is a bad idea cause you are taking all the tension off the neck all at once. A fretboard doesn't need to be cleaned every time you change strings .maybe once year. Some really bad advice being bandied about here.

Both Gibson and Fender recommend the one string at a time re string method.

 

All the strings come off at once. Only time that could be problematic is if leaving them off for a long time--ought to loosen the truss rod in that case. Only time I've ever done that was when installing new pickups--life intervened and I didn't get to it for a really long time after removing the strings and the neck.

 

I've always done it one string at a time on my SG. Haven't changed my strings on the tele yet. I'll probably loosen them and then take them all off before putting any new ones on.

 

I pull three at a time. Not sure why, but that's how I do it, and how I teach students to do it I think that's what my teacher showed me back in the day, but I dont rightly recall.

Sent from my SM-G975U using Tapatalk

 

Unless I’m lemon oiling the fingerboard and other general maintenance I replace them one at a time.

I replace the low E followed by the high E and work back through the treble side B, G, D and A.

I am 100% confident that removing at the strings does not cause any issues but the above is my preferred method.

 

I had to study a great deal of physics to get to be an Electronics /Maths lecturer at College level.

i have heard a lot of , IMO, stupid things like locking tuners are better- well, strings do stretch according to temperature and playing.Locking that factor in only makes it more preposterous.
What about changing on a Bibsby, or similar? Far easier one at a time. What about a floating bridge?
You are getting the sound of the string, below is a magnet and a magnetic field around it. So, a toploader, which most Gibson guitars are, are fine. So does wood count? Even Fender made a toploader in 1959.

I cringe when I see a guitar have all strings cut as the string tension disappears from the neck and then people try to right this by putting a new set on. What is happening to the neck in the meantime? In fact I didn't buy a Martin OM when this was done for me and left the salesman with the guitar.
Also, scale length has more importance than most think. You decide.

 

Just think for a minute. A finished guitar neck sits for possibly weeks in a factory in California before being bolted to a body and strung. It then gets shipped in a cardboard box to a destination that could be, literally, half way around the world. Having been sat in a warehouse, it get’s sent to a store, or end user. None of this affects the neck in a ‘forever’ way. And we are told to worry that leaving it unstrung for an hour or two, probably in the place it has ‘lived’ for a number of years, is gonna totally screw it? Come on!

 

Good point but is it only me that still looks away, squinting, when I take a new string up to pitch?

 

My hero!

 

Too much information........................what about changing your strings?

 

Rice pudding , elephant, outside your underpants asparagus you oxymoron plank of platypus*

*Me too.................didn’t work too well!

 

I bring them up to pitch from behind the guitar (or especially mandolin), in the normal playing position, so that if they break they snap away from me. I learned that a long time ago.

 

If changing strings, then loosen and cut them all. If replacing a pickguard, then as @beagle said.