Welcome to our first course with the amazing James Collins! James is a master guitar technician and builder and, alongside our resident gear head, Chris, James takes us through how to properly change strings, what tools can help and how to make sure they stay in tune! We look at a variety of different guitars including Fenders, Gibsons and acoustics!

  • Introduction
    In this comprehensive string changing course, James takes us through how the pros change strings! We begin our course with an introduction, talking about how often to change strings and which strings to use.

  • Modern Fender Style Tuners
    It's now time to start changing some strings, and we kick off with modern Fender style tuners. We will be going through how to best string this style of tuner, including all the tips, tricks and accessories you may need!

  • Vintage Fender Style Tuners
    Next up on the restringing bench is a Fender guitar with vintage style tuners. These tuners have a vertical hole for the string that goes down inside the tuner, unlike the horizontal one on the modern style tuners, meaning a different approach is needed.

  • 3x3 Gibson Style Tuner
    We now switch over to a typical 3x3 style tuning system, which is where you have 3 tuning pegs on each side of the headstock. This is typical of Gibson guitars, but is also seen on acoustics and many other brands of guitar.

  • Acoustic Guitars
    In this walkthrough, we look at how to restring acoustic guitars. The headstock part of the process is very similar to the 3x3 style tuners process, but the bridge is a totally different ball game!