Norrin Radd wrote:IME, strings go out of tune from being OVER stretched when initially installed. A longh time ago a read about a method propsed by Bill Lawrence where he recommends putting a new set on (no stretching), tune up a half step from where you play (so F for most of us) and let the guitar sit overnight.
If overstretched (or unevenly stretched along their length) the intonation can be totally shot and they'll never play true. That is definitely true.
Jondog wrote:I don't know if that works or not, but it only takes a few minutes to stretch a set of strings. I'd rather do that than wait all night.
Yeah, me too. I'd always rather
slightly under stretch a string at first than over stretch it. Uneven or over stretching = bad intonation and usually a string which won't resonate right at the correct pitch and sounds bad too - nasty wolf tones, poor sustain. But with a little practice it is easy to get it spot on, and PDQ too.
The big disadvantage of deliberately over tuning a semi tone and letting them fall back to correct pitch is that it may well work well enough for some strings / gauges, but not for others. I see a real risk of over stretching some that way - it just isn't precise enough to cover all strings, even in the same set, simply because they don't all need the same amount of stretching!
That
SECOND LINK from OrangePaul is
well worth watching, but if you can't be bothered (why not?) he does pretty much exactly what I do:
For starters I don't hold with that 'just change strings one at a time' nonsense.
Guitar necks are
immensely strong and you won't damage them at all by removing all the strings at once, so I do exactly that. (Being careful with fall apart Gibson type bridges!)
When winding each new strings up to tension I keep tension on it with my other hand so the wraps round the tuner stay under tension. (Number of wraps isn't critical as long as the string is well locked to the tuning post with a sharp kink as he showed and the wraps stay under tension. I've just re-done several basses with just two full wraps. Two to four is plenty enough on any bass or guitar unless you really need the break angle from the nut, and yes to many can cause more stretching in problems.)
Using a tuner I'll get all the first string (low E) to correct pitch. Then I'll pull it up from the board moderately hard at a couple of points along it's length with my thumb and finger, stretching it above the nut too. It'll fall back below pitch, so I tune back up to pitch and do it again. (Just leave the tuner on, you are going to do this a few times!
) As it drops less and less in pitch I'll stretch more gently because it is now getting there. When it stops falling below pitch with moderate to light stretching (both sides of the nut!) it is basically perfectly stretched in.
I'll get the first string to the point where it is only dropping
very slightly in pitch, retune it to correct pitch and move to the next string, and do the exact same, then all the rest in turn. When each string is very nearly staying up to pitch I'll do a quick re-run of them all and get things spot on.
Haven't overstretched a string in years!
For me having the strings correctly stretched means that I can pull an instrument out of its case after some weeks and it'll either be bang in tune or just slightly out with all the strings
evenly out in the same direction. (Usually slightly south, unless the weather has turned. And lightly south - due to being
fractionally under stretched is better, you always want to tune up, not down. Either way a very quick tweak - if needed - and I'm sorted. Normal to hard playing won't put the guitar out of tune.)
Only normal strings I can't (well, don't dare to) stretch in totally within a couple of minutes are nylon ones. There everything is way more exaggerated: they take a lot more stretching (lengthwise), but at a lower tension, and it is much easier to wreck them. Uneven or over stretching =
really bad intonation and usually a string which sounds
really bad -
nasty wolf tones,
very poor sustain. Being impatient one time I thought I'd try deliberately overpitching them (a semitone) and see how that worked. It didn't, I had to replace the lot straight off!
Even with nylon strings though I can usually get it so that everything is staying pretty much bang on pretty fast. But again I'd always prefer them to be fractionally under than overstretched so I can simply tune slightly up to correct pitch when I next grab the guitar - done.
Andy.
