My young nephew has owned a guitar for a couple of years and recently he told me that one of the strings had broken whilst he was practicing.
I told him that I would fix it for him and have it ready by the time his next lesson rolled around.
I hadn't replaced a guitar string before but it wasn't one of those jobs that struck me as being overly complicated so I did abit of googling but didn't really see any step by step instructions. As with all the other posts on this blog I thought I would figure it out and then post clear instructions for those that might have the same issue after me.
Step by Step guide - How to replace a broken guitar string
1.
Identify the broken string - The first job is to identify which guitar string has broken. This will be fairly easy to spot if it has snapped in the middle of string as there will be two pieces hanging off the guitar.
On my nephew's guitar the the thinnest E string (1st String) had come loose at the eyelet end leaving the string hanging off the machine heads (For a reference of guitar terminology take a look at the 'Anatomy of an electric stratocaster guitar' diagram at the end of this post).
By the time I got to see the guitar, my nephew and his friends had removed the string completely.
2.
Purchase the correct guitar string - My nephew's guitar was part of a starter bundle from
www.gear4music.com and it fortunately came with spare strings, however, if you don't have spare strings just visit a local music shop and they will be provide you with the correct string.
3.
Check the rear of the guitar - On the back of a stratocaster is a white plastic plate with six screws in it. I knew that the string had come away from the eyelet at the end of the string so I expected to hear it rattling around within the cavity behind the plastic plate.
When I held it up to my ear and shook it I couldn't hear anything so so I assumed it had fallen out of one of the small gaps in the plate.
4. Remove the plastic plate - The plate is held down by six small Phillips head screws. Carefully remove these to expose the inner workings of the guitar and keep them in a safe place.
5.
The inner components of the guitar - The holes shown in the image to the right are where you feed the strings through. If you look into these holes (probably will need a torch or the light on your phone) you will see they have six gold eyelets in each one. If you flip the guitar over with the back pointed toward the floor the broken strings eyelet should fall out.
On my nephews guitar it didn't so I had to take a closer look.
6. Remove any trapped eyelets - Unfortunately, the eyelet was wedged in so gravity wasn't enough to free it. In the end I used a very small Allen key to poke down in to the hole and flip it out.
7.
Remove your new string from the packaging and prepare it - When you get the string it will be wrapped and most likely coiled up so you will need to unwrap it and stretch it out.
If you pull it straight a few times it make it much easier to work with as you try and fit it.
8. Feed the guitar string - With the old eyelet now removed, take the end of the new string which doesn't have the eyelet and feed it through the corresponding hole.
9. Pull the guitar string out of the front - Once the string has gone into the back far enough you should start to see it poke through the front of the guitar.
Pull the string from the front until the eyelet moves into the hole at the rear. Shortly after, you wont be able to pull anymore as the eyelet will be secured.
10. Feed the string at the top of the neck - On my nephew's guitar the string needed to go through the white plastic strip (see right) and under the small metal clip.
11. Hold the string down (Important) - Steps 11 & 12 need to be done at the same time. Hold the string down in the position shown and then feed the string through the machine head.
Holding down is important as it provides slack to wrap around the machine head it step 13.
12. Feed the string through the machine head - Feed the string through the machine head hole and then pull it back towards yourself to put a curve in the string to stop it coming straight back out.
13. Tighten the tuning key - Keep turning the tuning key away from the guitar and you will see the machine head slowly turn. Keep doing this until the string becomes taught.
14. Tune the guitar - This is a good point to do an initial tune to make sure you don't over tighten the string.
Once tuned, play the string and throw in a few bends. As it is a new string it will probably go out of tune again so repeat this process a few time until it holds its tune.
15. Trim the new string excess - The strings can be quite long so it is good to give it trim to complete the job. I used the cutting part of a pair of pliers.
16. Refit the plastic backing plate - In step 4 we removed the plastic plate at the rear of the guitar. Now that we are nearing completion it can be reattached using the six Phillips head screws we removed earlier.
You should now have a fully playable guitar string and be able to give yourself a pat on the back for a job well done.
I hope you found this post helpful, please let me and others know in the comments section below how you got on.
As promised, here is a diagram of an electric guitar just in case any of the terminology used in this post was a little confusing.
Anatomy of an electric Stratocaster guitar
