Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
|
|
|
tuning new strings - help!!!
|
You are logged in as Guest
|
|
Users viewing this topic: none
|
|
Login  | |
|
   
Ricardo
Posts: 14819
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
|
 RE: tuning new strings - help!!! (in reply to Pimientito)
|
|
|
quote:
A trick is when you put new strings on the guitar, get it roughly in tune and then pull each string up away from the finger board about 3 inches. Yank the string up and down several times to really stretch it. Dont worry, you wont break the string. repeat that for each string and then retune the guitar. Do that a couple more times and the guitar will much more settled
I used to do this too, but an older friend warned me, the bass strings especially, saw into the wood of the tie block when you do that, and he had to get the bridge fixed because he messed up his guitar really bad from doing that.
What I do instead, is change half the strings, trebs or basses, (usually basses more often because they die quick) by tuning them sharp a half step. Then when it settles DOWN, they are pretty close to the pitch I want. I can get strings tuned up in 5 minutes this way.
Trebs take longer to stretch, but again I change those much less often then the basses. Again, I tune just the trebs a half step sharp. To break them in, I play a bit of Gerardo's solea por buleria that uses a similar tunning. I wonder if that is how he came up with that tune, by having the trebs a half step sharpe, stretching them out. The real tune is said to have the 3 basses a half step flat, but hopefully you can see the logic.
But anyway, no more hard tugging.
Ricardo
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Nov. 3 2007 15:33:28
 |
|
Adam
Posts: 1156
Joined: Dec. 6 2006
From: Hamilton, ON
|
|
RE: tuning new strings - help!!! (in reply to Ailsa)
|
|
|
Ricardo's advice is spot-on: I had the same issues as you did, my teacher told me to tune all my strings sharp a bit (like Ricardo, I go a half-step--they don't break then, and that seems to be just sharp enough, although it'll take a couple times of this to get the trebles to stay)....total life-saver, the strings are tuned up very quickly that way.
And it's also been said somewhere above (val), NEVER leave the guitar stringless! The guitar gets used to low tension, then suddenly you throw strings back on, and you're doing bad things to the wood. I've heard the bad effects are usually just that for a few hours the guitar doesn't sound as nice, but I don't like taking chances with tension of my guitar's wood!!
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Nov. 4 2007 0:41:04
|
|
Ricardo
Posts: 14819
Joined: Dec. 14 2004
From: Washington DC
|
|
RE: tuning new strings - help!!! (in reply to Pimientito)
|
|
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Pimientito
Sorry to bounce this thread back up but I have a couple of questions about this string tugging technique.
quote:
ORIGINAL: Ricardo
I used to do this too, but an older friend warned me, the bass strings especially, saw into the wood of the tie block when you do that, and he had to get the bridge fixed because he messed up his guitar really bad from doing that.
I dont understand how this can be true. The tie block normally has a piece of bone or mother of pearl inlay on the top. A nylon string can't saw into that. If someone in the guitars past stupidly fitted steel strings to it (i have seen this done a few times) then that will saw into the tie block, definately! I have seen cheap chinese guitars with plastic tie blocks and old Ramirez with no bone or mother of pearl tie blocks. If an old guitar does not have this then yes i can understand how that could happen but then again an old guitar would originally be fitted with gut strings. The prolonged higher tension of the nylons causes more damage than simply changing strings. This technique should be fine on a modern guitar.
Ok, talking DECADES of pulling those puppies, (maybe a little faster and harder than YOU do it?) every week. It was an older guy, and he ruined the bridge. Look at the actual angle of the hole where the strings go in. Those were supposed to be round, surely you will notice some wear after many years of this, especially 6th string. Trebels won't really do any damage I guess. Repair is not such a big deal if the tie block top piece is still good. Just fill the holes with rosewood or wood filler, and drill new ones.
In anycase, on the guitar I use most, I won't tug anymore, and it tunes up just fine fast by tunning a 1/2 step sharp as I described, so why take a risk?
Ricardo
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
|
|
|
|
REPORT THIS POST AS INAPPROPRIATE |
Date Nov. 21 2007 18:07:31
|
|
 New Messages |
 No New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/ New Messages |
 Hot Topic w/o New Messages |
 Locked w/ New Messages |
 Locked w/o New Messages |
|
Post New Thread
Reply to Message
Post New Poll
Submit Vote
Delete My Own Post
Delete My Own Thread
Rate Posts
|
|
|
Forum Software powered by ASP Playground Advanced Edition 2.0.5
Copyright © 2000 - 2003 ASPPlayground.NET |
0.078125 secs.
|
Printable Version
