realllly stupid question

present_tense

ALright, I bought an accoustic guitar this summer, and ive decided i should change the strings!! well, Ive never changed the strings on an accoustic, and im not sure how to get the base of the strings out of those little white knobs where the strings end!! Can someone help a guy out?? thanks a million

axel4pj

It's easy. Just use a pair of needle nose plyers and kind of twist it from side to side as your pulling it out. I'm sure there's a specific tool for this but the plyers always worked for me. And a little tip ; do the middle strings first and work your way out ie: D, G, A, B, E, e. Alwaws seemed eaiser for me to do it this way.

present_tense

thanks a bunch, you guys never let me down

mojorison_75

Present tense is right, those pins just pull out. I would suggest going down to the music store and spending a buck on a string winder to get them out though. It's cheap, can be used to unwind strings quickly(I don't use this feature much but it's there) and has a little notch on it to remove bridge pins. These are much friendlier to your bridge pins than pliers and is well worth a 1.25 or whatever they are at your music store.

As far as method, I usually loosen all the strings first. This will keep all the tension from resting on one or two strings when you're taking them off. I've never seen this be a real problem, it's just one thing to avoid possible trouble.

I usually take off the strings from the top down and them string them the same way, but that's all preference, there's no rule on order that I know of.

mccreadyisgod

Some folks in the business believe it's bad on a guitar to remove more than one string at a time, and so I've always taken one string off and replaced it, then moved on to the next string. The reason for this is you don't release all the neck tension at once. Then again, I've watched touring professional guitar techs remove all the strings at once and then replace them. So, who knows... develop your own method there.

Now, as far as removing the strings, unwind the string you're going to remove until it has no tension and THEN pull the bridge pin. Like mojorison_75 said, I'd get either a string winder or a bridge pin puller, either of which is available at a music store, and have them show you really quickly how to use it. They're cheap, efficient, and they won't damage your pins like a pair of pliers (I used to use the needlenose method, and ruined the first set of pins on my old Yamaha). I actually use a string winder because I like having it to re-wind the new strings, but I put a lot of winds of the string on the tuning head, so I end up winding a lot.

axel4pj

oops. I didn't mean to unstring in any specific order, I just find it eaiser to re string in the order I wrote. Seemed quicker to tune.