A certain time eventually comes in the life of any string musician when it’s time to change your strings. Unless you have a good reason to change your strings, like an upcoming gig or event, you probably avoid the chore just like I do. It might still be fun to noodle around with your dead strings playing fun tunes but at some point even a tin-eared musician realizes that those strings have to be changed to allow a beautiful instrument to have the sound it was born with.
I really HATE changing strings (with a capital H). Because I mostly play the mandolin, my job is especially difficult. The high E string of a mandolin requires extreme tension to stay in tune. It’s a wonder to me how such a tightly wound instrument doesn’t rip apart. I can’t tell you how many E strings I have broken over the last twenty years. I have a drawer full of lower strings because I keep breaking the thinner high strings.
I have a few tips for you string changers out there. First, always wear eye protection. One of my favorite bluegrass singer/guitarists of all time is Pat Enright. He lost an eye when a string popped while he was changing it. Mandolin players should consider goggles.
My next tip is to use the baseplate mounting apparatus to your best advatage. This doesn’t really apply to flat head guitar peg mountings or banjos but I have never broken strings replacing those instruments. I’m mostly talking to mandolinists like me who have to deal with that insanely tight E string. My Gibson F5 has a side peg for the E and A strings. You thread the end loop through the vertical peg before aligning the string on the second peg which sends it up through the fretboard along the proper notches. Often when you break the new high string it happens at the peg head and you can rethread the broken string using the inline peg while bypassing the longer route starting at the vertical peg.
Looping that tuner head with a lock knot gets harder every time. Sometimes the wire pops over the metal head and often it gets stuck behind the bridge or the side of the fretboard. By the time you figure out where that crazy wire has run off too, you may have pulled a flaw into it that makes you wish you had never bothered to change your strings in the first place.
But what a difference that little change makes! Once the new strings tune in I get a beautiful rich sound from my treasured instrument. My hundred year old Lyon & Healy mandolin (seen in my cover photo) has pegheads which make the strings especially difficult to change. But it is so worth it! You can only get that beautiful tone if the strings are new and the instrument is adjusted correctly. It’s the way the thing was supposed to sound
