hello and welcome in this video we're going to talk about changing the strings on a guitar some preventive maintenance and some upkeep and I forgot a friend of Mines guitar here that he wanted me to work on and I'll show you what I did to and how to clean it and change the strings this was kind of an afterthought of I should have done this before it took the strings off of it but got to thinking about I thought it might be something would be helpful to you for the very first thing I do is take the strings off the guitar so to do that you're going to need a string winder and here's pretty much standard one and the only thing you need to watch here when you take the strings off there's three things you need to make sure you're turning it the right way other words you're releasing the tension because you don't want it to break and hit you okay so then the other things realize that it's under tension that when it comes off it could it could hit you in the face also the ends of those strings are sharp so don't prick your finger and if you've been around played a while you've probably already done that okay so as I release them a lot of times I'll just lay my hand on top of the strings to keep them I'll release the tension which normally is counterclockwise with a string winder I'll go to this end release the string off of here take it off and then discard them so that's the way I take them out that's the way I get the strings off okay the next thing we'll talk about which is real easy is to clean the guitar now this is just going to be a suggestion this is what I do with my guitar so I'm going to show you the things I have and this may sound silly but I use Windex and I have a top in some guitar probably about $7,000 guitar or that I've used this on for years I feel comfortable doing it if you don't want to do that then clean higher if you you know whatever you feel comfortable with just use a simple cotton cloth and in this case I just use us a simply a saw that's a good cloth to use and that's how I snore Mele spray the guitar down clean it this guitar I'd probably setup for about a year and was filthy just literally filthy okay the next thing that I use which is recommended I believe on the zone website and this is not product endorsements but this is just what I'm using it's called mothers mag and aluminum polish can get this at an auto parts store and this when you put it on the polished parts the pasta aluminum there's a lot of oxidation here from like your hands the oils and your hands and assaults that rag will turn plump will be black literally black just keep polishing that till it comes clear and this will start shining this is really a good product to use all right then the next thing I'll normally all up the rollers and the bridge mechanism here and again I think this is recommended on the zone website simply three-in-one or and what you want to do here and I found it on this guitar somebody use like a heavy grease and it actually but it gets clogged up and attracts dust and dirt and lint so you don't you don't use a heavy oil or grease so anyhow this is a three-in-one all again I bought this said an auto parts store ok I'll show you something on this end you might think about now let's look at the headstock here and the rollers I'm gonna show you a couple of things I do here first one is I'll normally check the keys and this is a flathead screwdriver on top I'll tighten those this guitar was in good shape but if these keys are loose tighten that with that flathead screw the second thing is actually how the key mounts to this headstock Oma's ohm it's a 10 millimeter but on this one it happened be at 12 so you need a box end wrench you can simply take the nut which is inside here and tight-knit if these keys are loose that's another good thing to do while you got the strings off obviously so that's another thing I do also while you have the strings off this is the time to clean in here and I'll show you something I do here which is again kind of just something I've done over the years simply take a q-tip and that gets in here real easy gets in between these keys and you don't have to worry about more than this polish okay the next thing I'm going to show you is a little more involved and I'm talking about the rollers here on your guitar this is kind of like rotating the tires on your vehicle if you think about these strings lie on top of these rollers and they've moved just a very little bit so that's being worn the same place over and over and over so what I do and I did on this guitar is I simply remove this roller assembly and the only thing you need to be careful here is with two things if these are gauged in other words like if this tenth string is wider then this first string then you need to remember the order that you took them off and second thing is that I usually just use a flathead screwdriver I'm gonna pry this out it has they has a bar with the rollers alright what we're going to do now is simply remove this roller system just be careful not to Mar the neck of the fretboard I'm just using a Phillips and I'm going right here just kind of lifting it up see that I mean it's not rocket science and then I'm just gonna keep pride and get this out and what I did on this guitar which I've already cleaned it I simply take all the rollers off again if they're not gauged which these aren't they just simply slide off and like I told you on the on this guitar they'd use like a heavy grease this whole bar was just corroded and so I simply took the polish clean this shaft off real good and also took each individual roller cleaned it polished it I took cook the q-tip clean this part here real good okay then we just reassemble just since they're not gauged or all the same exact I simply put them back on the shaft and again another thought here is that if you wanted to rotate these like put the 10th went on the first to make it very different that wouldn't be a bad idea and we'll just reinstall this which is a little tricky but not anything you can't do so we get all 10 of them own kind of lay this up here like this start spacing them out this just kind of line them up and only go like this kind of line them up like that and each each guitar is different like so this is totally different from ours own this is a BM BM I guitar so then just kind of roll them in lay that in click it in ok then I simply look at the shaft and this is pretty good but if it's not centered or if it's not even you can simply tap that shaft it'll move real easy either end of it kind of Center that up ok so after we have our rollers reinstalled simply take the three-in-one or just put a lot a plane each roller which I've already done on this guitar when I cleaned it originally ok then simply just take them and roll them like that you know to get though all down make it work down ok so while we have the oil we'll go to the bridge in and I'll show you what to do down there also ok now we'll talk about the bridge in while we're rolling I simply do two things down here I take the q-tips we had while ago we talked about and I'll clean between these rollers and again it's something that's real you know it's not going to Mar the finish and again what I'm doing here is that I found a lot of guitars that they've used the wrong type all our grease and we've got to build up some of you can see that but that's what happens so q-tips are real easy way to do that it's a real easy way to get in between these fingers or these rollers and again you see the build up and then I take my three and 100 which we talked about well ago again now product endorsement but it just works real well it's a lot of will go between each roller you know whatever you want to call these fingers bridge assembly and I just give that a light application and then after a while then we get our strings on and start doing our pedals and knee levers these fingers will start moving and that will apply that on down okay another thing we're gonna do here while we're on this end of the guitar is talk about adjusting this pickup okay while we're on this end of the guitar I'll show you an easy way or an easy way to gauge the height of your pickup this is something I heard buddy Emmons talking about one time you simply take a quarter that's going to be the height lay that on that pickup put your strings on and that should clear in other words the height of the string shouldn't touch that quarter the way you're just the high is simply with these screws right here these Phillips head screws that adjust that pickup up and down okay so now let's I'm not going to talk through stringing the whole guitar because that'd be you know there's no sense of that but I will show you how to do one string and that'll be duplicate you know for the rest of the night so let me get my strings and show you the tools we need for that alright now we're go ahead and show you how to put the strings on and an annotation later if you want to check it out I'll show you products and gear that I use so you know I'm not going to get into what type of strings I'm using but what we're going to do on this end on the gin with the finger we get our string out of first strain simply on call that string be careful again it's it's under tension so don't you know don't poke yourself an eye with it on this particular guitar which is different than mine the ball end of that string will hook in here on this first finger so it's kind of tricky and as you get older it gets a little harder to see that buddy now the ball in hooks into the finger and you can see that it's supplied now I'll show you how to judge the length how long we want this string on the key in all right now we're going to look at this in the key end and see how to judge the length of the string what we need it obviously you don't need the whole string so I guess what I'm saying is I'm going to show you a good way to judge where to cut these strings off oK we've applied the first string so this is a string rafter right now what I simply do that string is going to this key right here to judge the distance on where I want to cut them off I go to Keys past in other words I go to the third key to cut it I said to grab that string right there and I get my wire cutters and clip it right there and that would be for the first string now let me show you while we're here obviously if you go down to the fifth key you don't have two keys past it there you have to kind of judge it what I do is I normally go two inches past that in other words if I was applying the fifth string I would go probably two inches past that which is about the distance of two keys in other words I hold it right here clip that string off then that will go for the fifth string so let's let's talk back now about the first string okay I said I'll go two keys past and cut it so that's what I'm going to do right now I'm going to hold that string to keep it from flying off again you don't want to poke yourself and I are somebody with you okay then we turn the key around get get the hole lined up the thing you won't be careful here now is on a guitar when you run this string in through the hole you don't want it tomorrow this finish so I run it through just where I can see it come out the other side then I take and crimp that string like that then I hold up a little tension on it go ahead and put it in the roller start winding that clockwise okay and the way I do this also to keep from strip cut out on your string breakage is make sure you don't overlap these windings on this key in other words they're going to be uniform they're going to feed that way and you simply wind that string up and as you're doing this you can check your roller make sure your roller because I've got tension on it right here with this hand make sure that rollers moving freely this let's get our has some good keys on it so it's not an issue with this guitar okay and I just kind of get it tight I'm not trying to tune it up right now and then like I said on this end make sure when you put the string through the key that it's not going to come back around and more of this finish watch this roller as you're doing attention the length is normally two Keys past the key you're going to apply on the first string so I went to the to the third key cut that string off if I was doing the fifth string I would simply go out about two inches past that cut it alright I hope this video was helpful and that you've got some good information off of it if you do on the video just click the like and subscribe there also there will be a listing of the products that I used on the video and if there's any questions and again those are just suggestions of the things I've used for years and years and they've worked for me and now like I said I wish you could have seen this guitar before I started it was it was a pretty bad J and turned out really well