Stringwinder

Stringwinders are useful tools that make stringing the guitar considerably faster.

Stringing a guitar

with a Floyd Rose tremolo.

An exception to the description on the right is when stringing a guitar with a Floyd Rose or similar tremolo. In this case the string is threaded into the tuner shaft hole first and then clamped and cut at the tremolo unit (the ball end side is at the peghead).

Set-up

The set-up jobs described in the following are specific ajustments for each individual guitar. All set-up jobs should be done carefully, without rushing and in the order in which they are described here. A badly set-up instrument can make the most perfectly-built guitar sound like scrap metal.

Stringing the guitar

String the guitar very carefully; badly strung guitars tend to go out of tune rather easily. Only wind as many turns of string as necessary around the tuner shafts.

Place the guitar on a work surface and anchor the first string at the bridge. Then pass the string over the nut and past “its” tuner and tension it by hand. To ensure that the string is long enough for fitting but at the same time as little of the string as possible has to be wound around the shaft work out the approximate string length required as follows: at the 12th fret hold your fingers (use four fingers under the bass and three under the treble strings) between the string and the fret, lightly stretch the string and place it on the tuner shaft. Then bend the string at the tuner shaft hole at an angle of 90 degrees towards the hole and pass it through the hole or, if your tuner shafts are slotted, put it into the slot; then wind the string around the shaft in a clockwise direction. When doing this pass the string under the part of it which was passed through the hole, bend it upwards and then tighten it by pulling. Continue by turning the tuners in an anticlockwise direction until the string is tensioned. Fit the other strings in the same way. If I have managed to confuse you with this description, just look at the figure on the left and everything should become clear. Note that the winding directions given above apply to right-hand-side tuners and will of course be reversed when fitting strings to tuners on the left-hand side of the guitar. When the guitar is on your shoulders you should be able to raise the pitch of the strings by turning the tuner knobs in an away-from-the-body direction.

With bass tuners and some kinds of guitar tuners the guitar is easier to string: simply pass each string to the tuner and clip it, leaving it a little longer to allow for a few windings on the shaft. Stick the string end into the hole in the tuner shaft, bend it and then wind it up. Make sure to place each winding under the previous one around the shaft to get a sufficient angle at the nut. Placing the final winding at the bottom is particularly important on guitars with Fender-style pegheads.

Locking tuners make stringing very easy indeed: simply pass the string through the hole, tension it lightly, lock it and then tune it. When using a fine-tuning tremolo with locking nut the strings are fitted as usual (i.e. wound onto the tuner shafts), and then rough-tuned before being clamped at the nut and the tremolo. The strings will go out of tune again, but this can be corrected with the fine-tuning screws of the tremolo unit.

When using headless tuners the ball-end with the smaller ball is anchored at the head-end of the guitar and the one with the larger ball at the tuning unit. After only a few turns the guitar will be in tune and the tuning will remain very stable as there are no string windings which could settle.

Tuning

After tuning, the full string pull becomes effective on the neck. When setting up the guitar always use strings identical with the ones you will use later. Electronic tuners are extremely useful for tuning. Chromatic tuners are a bit more expensive but also offer some advantages: no switching is required during tuning, and you can also use them for tuning other instruments such as flutes, saxophones, violins, cellos, etc. As the expression “bringing the strings up to the correct pitch” implies, the right tone should be approached from below to eliminate any possible influence from the tuner play. If a string is sharp, turn it down first and then approach the correct pitch from below.

Newly-fitted strings go out of tune again quickly; they need time to “settle”. This time can be shortened by carefully stretching the strings after they have been tuned a first time. Then retune them and stretch them again, and continue like this until the string remains in tune.

Using harmonics for tuning is an alternative tuning method which relies on the fact that it is easier for the human ear to distinguish between high-pitched tones than between lowpitched ones. Producing harmonics on the guitar takes some practicing – here's how to do it: lightly touch the string above a particular fret (see list on the right) – do not actually press it down -, pluck it and then quickly take the finger off the string. A high-pitched, sustained vibrating tone will be produced. This method has the advantage that it allows producing two tones in quick succession which can be heard simultaneously and can therefore be compared. If necessary, they can be brought up to the same pitch by turning one of the tuners while both harmonics can still be heard. Basses are tuned one octave lower than guitars.

Tuning by ear

With the following method you can tune your guitar without an electronic tuner:

(1)Tune the open A string with the help of a reference tone from a tuning fork or another tuned instrument.

(2)Press down the bass E string on the 5th fret and tune it to the same pitch as the open A string.

(3)Press down the A string on the 5th fret and tune the open D string to the same pitch.

(4)Press down the D string on the 5th fret and tune the open G string to the same pitch.

(5)Press down the G string on the 4th fret and tune the open B string to the same pitch.

(6)Press down the B string on the 5th fret and tune the open treble E string to the same pitch.

To check the tuning compare the two open E strings with each other.

Fine-tuning by ear

Harmonics produced at the following fret positions have to be identical in pitch:

(1)5th fret of bass E string and 7th fret of A string

(2)5th fret of A string and 7th fret of D string

(3)5th fret of D string and 7th fret of G string

(4)G string just under the 5th fret and 7th fret of B string

(5)5th fret of B string and 7th fret of treble E string.

When two harmonics are almost identical in pitch, a slow vibration can be clearly heard which only disappears when both tones are perfectly equal in pitch.

Often electronic tuners react much better to harmonics than to a “normally played” string.

1

Some guidelines for the neck relief

Distances from the top of the 6th fret to the bottom of the straight edge (or string):

Guitar: 0.25 - 0.3mm (0.01" - 0.013") Bass: about 0.5mm (0.02")

Under no circumstances should a truss rod be abused for setting the action - its only purpose is to counteract the pull of the strings by keeping a neck either completely straight or in a light concave bow.

Adjusting the neck relief

A neck with a light bow leaves more room for the vibrations of the strings. Any adjustment made only applies for the set of strings that is fitted at the moment the truss rod is adjusted as it compensates exactly the pull exerted by a particular set of strings and keeps the neck bow within certain limits. Any later change of the string gauge also calls for a readjustment of the neck bow. However, before you embark on adjusting the neck relief, tune the guitar and then put it away and leave it to “work” overnight: the pull of the strings will take some time to become effective. Then retune the guitar and place a straight edge over the first 13 frets, holding the guitar in the playing position. It is important to hold the guitar and not to have it lying flat on a surface as the weight of the neck alone would already lead to distortions in adjustment. If you place a capo on the first fret, you will have one hand free for checking the straightness with a feeler gauge (1). If you press down a string after the 12th fret, it is dead straight and can be used in place of a straight edge to check the straightness of the neck. The recommended distance (neck relief) between the top of the sixth fret and the bottom of the straight edge or string depends on the scale length and the string gauge. Shorter scale lengths and thinner strings produce less strong vibrations while long scales and bass strings require more room for vibrating. Guitars can have a relief of 0.25 to 0.3mm (0.01" - 0.013"); 0.5mm (0.02") is recommended for basses. The neck bow can be rough-adjusted by pressing down a string at the 1st and 13th fret and by tapping it with a finger at the 6th fret and then making any adjustment that may be necessary. Always loosen the strings before turning the truss rod nut. Adjust the truss rod so that the distance is right: turning the adjustment nut in a clockwise direction gives the neck a backbow and reduces this distance; if the distance between the strings and the frets is too small, the adjustment nut has to be untightened by turning it in an anticlockwise direction. Never turn the nut by more than a quarter of a turn at a time. After each truss rod adjustment the strings have to be retuned and the full pull of the strings has to be reestablished. The neck bow may change in the course of the other adjustments yet to be made and described below; it may therefore be necessary to carry out the above adjustment procedure several times. But once the guitar is completely set up and the neck relief is right no further adjustments are needed and the truss rod is best left untouched. The truss rod will only require readjusting when strings of a different gauge are fitted on the guitar. And finally: the truss rod must never be used for setting the action – its only purpose is to adjust neck relief.

Setting the string height at the nut

At the nut the distance between the bottom of the strings and the fingerboard surface should be no greater than the fret height. An action that is too high in the nut area will lead to a wrong intonation, the pitch becoming too high as the string is tensioned too strongly when pressed down at the first fret. Besides, the guitar will be uncomfortable to play because of the fingers having to press harder and the strings feeling stiff. The fretheight line drawn on the nut comes in handy now: file the nut slots down to this line. See the section on how to make the neck for details of how this is best done. Use a saw for deepening the slots for the thin strings and special nut files for the other slots. The slots for the bass strings can also be made deeper with a needle file. Take each string out of its slot and put it into a neighboring one before you deepen the slots. On radiused fingerboards the height of the strings has to follow its curve and the strings must all be equally high above the fingerboard. If you press down the strings one by one now, you should need the same amount of pressure for each string. Deepen the nut slots if necessary until all strings feel similar. There should only be very little room for the strings over the first fret when pressed down between the 2nd and 3rd fret.

If the action is set too low, the vibrations cause the strings to touch the frets and produce unwanted noises. If by mistake a nut slot has been made too deep, replace the missing material with a drop of super glue, allow it to harden overnight and then redo the slot. If all nuts slots are too deep, glue a suitable piece of hardwood veneer under the nut and then file the slots down to the right depth. Cardboard or similar materials should not be glued under the nut as they would only dampen the transmission of vibrations. To prevent making nut slots too deep feeler gauges of fret height should be placed under the fret file (2). To measure the fret height drill a hole into a small piece of wood or metal and then place this piece on the frets. Using the depth gauge of the caliper the distance from the fingerboard surface can be measured through the hole. The fret height is then easy to work out by subtracting the thickness of the piece from the value measured. A lot of guitarbuilders set the action at the nut without taking any precise measurements – they just go by the impression they get when pressing down the strings.

Another important thing is to make the slots slightly lower towards the peghead side so that the strings rest exactly on the front edge of the nut (the zero-fret position) and not somewhere further back, which would be tantamount to a lengthening of the scale and would guarantee intonation problems. To make the slots lower towards the peghead side, hold the file or saw at an angle. The nut slots should be made to precisely match the strings, i.e. have the same curve and not be too wide. When you

Correct nut slots

Round nut slots should not surround more than one half of the strings.

The bottom of V-shaped nut slots also has to correspond to the string diameter and needs to be curved, too.

Use of feeler gauges

You can avoid making nut slots too deep by placing feeler gauges of fret height under the nut file. This enables you to get the slot depth absolutely right.

A zero-fret

makes nut-filing easier

Filing nut slots is very easy indeed if you make a zero-fret: the slots then only serve to guide the strings and you only need to get their width right - their depth becomes insignificant. To ensure the strings rest only on the zero-fret the nut slots have to be made deeper than the zero-fret.