Congratulations You Have Just Purchased a New Guitar!

It’s a wonderful portable instrument that will serve you well for many years, providing you take care of it.. In order to get the most from your new instrument you will need to learn some simple facts about the way a guitar works. As a guitar repair person I see the same mistakes made over and over again resulting in costly visits to my shop. This is why I have compiled some simple instructions for the care and feeding of your new guitar.

Strings and Tuning

 Whether you’ve spent $200, or $10,000, your guitar probably won’t always stay in tune. Keeping your guitar in tune is an acquired skill and many factors come into play when considering why the tuning doesn’t hold.

When putting a new set of strings on a guitar, electric, or acoustic, the string must be wrapped around the tuning key post three times. Less wraps will cause the string to slip backwards on the post, and more than three will cause the string to continue stretching for an extended period of time.

Once the string is installed properly on the guitar, it must be stretched out a little bit in order to keep the pitch of the string from becoming flat. Whether you have a steel strings or nylon strings they both will need to be stretched out. This is accomplished by holding the string at about the middle of its length, and gently tugging on it for about thirty seconds. Follow this procedure for all six strings.

Guitar strings come in various tensions and thicknesses. Your guitars truss rod has been set up from the factory to match the strings it came with. When changing the strings you will need to keep this in mind, as if you use thinner or thicker strings it will likely cause a change in the way your guitar plays. Imagine the guitar as a balanced scale. If you put a different string on it than it is set up for, the scale will become out of balance. An out of balance guitar may produce an annoying buzz when played or require too much effort to push the string down to contact the frets. This balance is adjusted by turning the truss rod inside the neck. Again this should only be done by an experience player or guitar repair person.

Why have thinner or thicker strings anyway? Well, thicker or higher tension strings cause the guitar to produce a louder sound. More experienced players tend to prefer this; however it is more difficult to play a guitar with thicker strings. So again it is a balance between what your hands are comfortable with and what sounds good to your ear.

Humidity

 Your guitar may have been manufactured in a country where the humidity is different than where you live and keep your guitar. Wood contains a safe amount of moisture and when this amount changes it will likely need to have adjustments made to it to compensate. This is normal and to be expected. Changes also occur when you are traveling with your instrument. Basically the guitar is a lot like you. It doesn’t like rapid changes in climates. So if you notice a difference if the way your guitar plays, it may just need to be adjusted due to changes in the seasons or temperature.

Pitch

Your guitar is designed to have only so much tension placed on it. When tuning, make sure you use an electronic tuner, pitch pipe, or tuning fork, so that it is always tuned to concert pitch. (A-440) 

Tuning your guitar above concert pitch is not recommended and will likely cause damage to occur. Tuning below concert pitch will likely cause the guitar to buzz and rattle.

Set up

 When a guitar leaves the factory, it is set up to play in the most common, and convenient manner. Some people prefer a high action while others prefer low. You may choose to have your guitar adjusted to suit your playing comfort. This should be done by your local guitar repair person. So if your new guitar is uncomfortable to play on, it is just in need of a first visit to the doctor. After all, it wasn’t long ago that your guitar was a tree somewhere. It has to be trained to become a guitar, in a manner of speaking.

It is a common belief that the more it gets played the better it will sound. I share this belief, so play your guitar as often as you can and enjoy it. It will reward you for it.

Written by Bill Johnson. musician, educator, repair tech.

Sidney Music Works 656-1900