How To Make Your Electric Guitar Play Great!: Stringing a guitar

When I first thought of re-stringing a guitar I was kind of intimated by the task, I didn't want to mess up the guitar somehow but the strings were wearing down and I knew it was time to replace them. Once again, I used my friends Fender to accomplish this. Cleaning the fret-board was a perfect opportunity to take off the strings to replace them. Once I had completed cleaning the guitar, it was time to re-string. Restringing a Fender guitar is a little bit tricky, you cannot cut the strings close to the tremolo bridge, or the string will be lost inside, and you will have to spend time fishing it out.

If you have cut the strings correctly, the neck should look like this. You then have to thread the strings through the tremolo bridge and up into the neck of the guitar where the strings are wrapped around the pegs.

 On one of the last rotations around the peg, make sure to tuck the string underneath itself, so it doesn't slide out while you're playing. "This extra string length creates enough winds around the post to force the string down close to the peg head... If you use too many winds, you're inviting the string to stretch and the tuning will slip" (Erlewine 11). Leave about a quarter of an inch excess of the string, then cut the string. Repeat that for each of the 5 following strings until you are finished. 

How to Make Your Electric Guitar Play Great!: Cleaning the fretboard

Cleaning the fret-board of the guitar is a very simple task and should take no more than 10 minutes to complete. "In the absence of deionized water, substitute warm water. Again, user this sparingly on a clean rag" (Erlewine 18).  To accomplish this, I had to first take the strings off of the guitar. I used my friends Fender for this objective. I unscrewed the back cabinet of the guitar and cut the strings out and pulled them from the guitar. I then took a slightly damp rag and wiped down each fret individually until each fret was clean. 

I wiped the rag in a circular motion to ensure that the entire fret was clean. I was surprised to see how much residue I had removed from the guitar by the time I had finished. This build up is very bad to have on a guitar because it messes up the sound. It adds a static-like noise which is not wanted while playing.