right now I'm putting on new strings on an upright bass for one of my students Brett and so far I have the g string on right now and I wanted to show you guys how to restring a bass because there are a lot of different ways to do it but I like what I've kind of figured out so right now I'm doing the D string the D string is kind of a pain so you can see down in there the peg box is pretty you know tight but here's what I do so I take the string and I I keep it full length and I put it in the top side of the peg and I turn the string I mean when the peg and I grab with needle nose and what I'm gonna do is pull it through a considerable amount okay and then I'm gonna turn the the peg back around backwards to expose the same hole that I just went through and I'm gonna put it through one more time and I do this with every string doing this kind of makes the string tie itself in a knot so now that I have that in there just gonna keep it in there I'm gonna turn it back and grab it again with with the pliers and just kind of pull pull enough length in pull it okay so now we've got a pretty good amount of string in there okay and then I can grab the string itself and and pull it back through so now I've got this little kind of not going on and now I can tighten the string some people have like string winders and stuff that they use but I find that doing it with your hand it's a good exercise also so notice I'm keeping the string tight to keep it in the bridge and I'm doing that just so everything lines up let it go now I tried to I've got the old a string here I'm I'm gonna try to when I wrap the a string do it so the winding it doesn't really touch the D string so much the g string is gonna be kind of on there at this point but that's okay if I can keep them winding from touching other windings tuning is a little more stable overall okay so now I'm gonna check the ball make sure that the ball is up in the in the channel here in the tailpiece if it's not and you tighten it it'll slip through the hole and whack in the head I've had that happen before and that's gonna separate and make a little space okay so now I have all this excess string back here and what I can do now is grab the excess bring it back around and clip it and I'm gonna clip it just just inside the peg box here and before I clip it I fold it into itself okay now I can do the a I always go G to e just because how the the strings kind of layer on top of each other but it doesn't really matter some people go D first that's fine okay if you're saving your strings you want to Y unwind them all the way if you're not saving strings you can just cut people will reuse the little felt things that come with strings I'm actually not putting these on it just depends okay so now what I'm doing is I'm getting this thicker string up into the channel here making sure that it's all the way up and then as I tighten it it'll compress and and squish into place there'll be enough tension to move it okay so with the a string because it's a little closer toward the nut I'm actually gonna cut the string first so what I'm gonna do is measure about four inches away from the peg so I'm about that far away and I'm gonna cut the string again I'm gonna fold it first and I'm gonna do the exact same procedure that I did before now notice the D string is over the peg the hole of the a string so I need to be mindful of what side I put the string on and how the string whines as I go I want it to be winding from the hole towards the side of the peg box so I'm just gonna do the same little thing again put the string in pull it up through now notice I'm on I'm on the outside of the string okay I'm gonna twist this back again but the bigger strings it's a little harder to do but it's not impossible especially if you have pliers I've done it without pliers and that's a real pain to try to reach in there okay so now what I do is pull that string tight and it creates a little knot there and as the string gets tight the knot will compress upon itself and doing this I've never had a string break since I started doing it this way which is really cool because having an upright bass string break especially on a gig is kind of a frightening experience it freaks you out so okay so now I'm gonna just kind of push it down into place and start and as I tighten it it'll it'll you'll seal what you'll see the knot kind of tightened on itself okay and I'm holding the string tight again okay so see how it hit the D string and it kind of pushed it there's a little angle there this is kind of common in string instruments that is actually going to make the D string sharp so as you tune the a string the D string will change pitch so you have to be careful how you set this up so what will happen is over time this string will stretch and I can start moving these just not around same with the D string it'll move and stretch yeah that's bugging me enough that I'm gonna fix it so if I have that problem then what I'm gonna do so I'm loosening the D string now I'm actually gonna switch this side that the string another a string I can tighten and I'm and even though it looks like it's touching I'm actually missing it you can kind of see scoot it over a little bit so I'm missing the G I'm missing the a there you go so now they're not touching so when I tune it'll be a lot more stable okay it's not gonna do e with the e because it's so thick it's hard to get it in there twice depending on the brand of the string and how tapered the coil is at the end I might be able to get it in there twice if not I'll do it once with enough length to wrap and it's the a string is high enough away from the peg that I won't actually touch so I wrapped the e a little more traditionally without tying a little knot and it seems to hold you know of course it's been done that way for hundreds of years but I like these little knot things that I've done because they're neat there's not a lot of string flying out and everything's really danced in there so and you can stretch the strings a little quicker and they settle into place nicely okay the hard part with the e string is in the tail piece because of the thickness of the string I have had to I've had to file out this part I've had to like widen this on some of my students bases because it's not wide enough for the E string wrap so let's see how this notice how the wrap of the string is kind of like thinner one way than it is the other like that way so I want to line that up with the channel you can see it if I put the string in backwards over this here so here's the here's the string now if I go this way this is pretty wide but this way it won't fit as well as it will this way right you see that so now I can put it in the right direction and this one is pretty well okay so with the e-string what I'm gonna do is I'm gonna actually put it in the channel all the way up and I'm gonna push down with my thumb so yeah I'm kind of bending that string into place it's gonna push down right there and then with all the strings I push just a little bit on the bridge but with the E string I push from both sides see that see what I just did okay okay when I come up and I'm gonna measure off maybe six or so inches six or seven inches away from the peg so I don't need all of this for the B string okay I'm gonna bend it clip it okay and now I can proceed in the same way what I have to do though is I have to wind underneath because I don't want to hit the other strings so I have to feed it this way the same kind of idea to turn it back this string is thin enough that I think I can get it in twice and notice I'm kind of working around the a-string that's and that's okay you can loosen the a string and scoot it off to the side if it's too difficult to do and bring that around ii get pretty good around okay and i'm gonna kind of push it through so i can get to it with the pliers here we go BAM oh sorry okay so there's really not that much rap on the e but because of that little knot it'll be pretty solid and I just tighten the string and you know just let this do its thing that's not that can stuff it down in there or I can cut it off more if I want and the E string e string will stretch the most or rather the most often I want to double check this here so I push up so that it's all the way up and I can tighten it while I do that I just get it perfect in perfect fourths you know close to the pitch and then I can stand it up and fine tune it so there you go