I have a big question about restringing a guitar which hasnt been played in years.

[jvegas]

Hey guys my cousin dropped off his fender deluxe strat that he never played and was bought around the time I got my first strat which was 99'/00' time. He said it hadnt been strung since 03.. my question is...

Should i restring it..then work on the neck and the intonation? or do anything before its strung. I take it i should look for problems in the bridge/nut/frets etc..

Another question I want to tune my guitars back to E standard, they were taken to a tech and setup to D standard about a year and half ago. Would you recommend me restring and tune the new strings to E and then intonate and whatnot... or Tune the strings back to E, intonate.. change the old strings (havent been changed in 4 months) and then intonate?

sorry haha

I figure Id bring the guitars back to E when I change the strings.

[octavedoctor]

Hey guys my cousin dropped off his fender deluxe strat that he never played and was bought around the time I got my first strat which was 99'/00' time. He said it hadnt been strung since 03.. my question is...

Should i restring it..then work on the neck and the intonation? or do anything before its strung. I take it i should look for problems in the bridge/nut/frets etc..

Another question I want to tune my guitars back to E standard, they were taken to a tech and setup to D standard about a year and half ago. Would you recommend me restring and tune the new strings to E and then intonate and whatnot... or Tune the strings back to E, intonate.. change the old strings (havent been changed in 4 months) and then intonate?

sorry haha

I figure Id bring the guitars back to E when I change the strings.

You should always set the guitar with the string gauge you are going to be using.

Forget about intonating it until you have the new strings on, but do the initial setting up with the old ones as any slackening and retightening will stress the new ones so it's better that the old ones take the brunt of that.

So, set arc relief first (about .010" fall at the 7th or 8th fret), then the nut height (best left to a pro) and saddle height (your call) and bridge balance with the old strings. All these elements will have an effect on the intonation so get them right first, then do the intonation. My best advice on that is to use your ears rather than a tuning meter as meters will tell you the exact frequency of the fundamental, but, because of inharmonicity, not how in tune the string sounds

What gauge are you using?

One tip, if you have the trem enabled, is to put the backplate between the bridge and the body then tighten up the springs in the back (pro roadies used to use a coin in the corner of the bridge behind the trem arm but the backplate is convenient if you have it) change the strings, tune the guitar, then with the guitar on its side, slacken the springs off until the backplate falls out. Voila! a perfectly balanced bridge with just the right amount of forward pitch and no fussing...

I go on a bit don't I?

Hope that's of help

[Gearjoneser]

Get it playing OK with the existing strings, tuned to E. Put the new strings on.

Then, go to my post on Rainmaker's Intonation thread in The Vault section of this forum, and follow everything step by step. Remember, intonation is always the last step, after saddle adjustments and trussrod adjustments.

[wixedmords]

Jvegas,

Are you saying that strat hasn't had strings on it for 2 years or hasn't been re-strung in 2 years?

[CharlieNC]

i disagree. while you will be able to get it somewhat playable with old strings, the only way to get a professional setup is to start from scratch, strings and all. if you're happy with it being okay, and are on a budget, then i guess you could start working on the relief with the old strings, but i doubt it will be anywhere close when you put the new strings on. after two years, those strings are not going to react anything like a fresh set will, as far as what kind of pull they put on the neck. also, if the guitar has been set to D for a while, you may want to let the guitar settle for a day after adjusting the truss rod a small amount. you want to do this because while the neck will react somewhat immediately after turning the rod, the effect will be more pronounced after leaving it alone for awhile and you will be able to avoid going back and forth several times trying to get it right. that's another reason you should just buy two sets of strings and use one new set to setup and get the guitar going and then a fresh set when you're ready to rock.

[lex666]

I'm no expert, but here's what I would do...

Put on new strings in a guage of your preference

Tune guitar

Adjust string height

Adjust truss rod only if necessary

Re-tune

Adjust intonation

Rock out.


Hope that helps....

[jvegas]

yes the one strat hasnt been strung in 2 years.. the other one has to be restrung but theyve been changed 4 months ago since ive had it in my case.

thanks!

[wixedmords]

yes the one strat hasnt been strung in 2 years.. the other one has to be restrung but theyve been changed 4 months ago since ive had it in my case.

thanks!

On the one that hasn't been strung, it is gonna take a bit of just sitting there with the strings on it to pull the neck back in. I would string it and put it away for a week or so. Unfortunately, the neck may have issues with it due to the time sitting unstrung.

[CharlieNC]

yeah, you're going to have to put new strings on the 4 month guitar too. Even though that set of strings may not sound completely dead they have still been on there way too long. pro players change their strings daily.

[octavedoctor]

i disagree. while you will be able to get it somewhat playable with old strings, the only way to get a professional setup is to start from scratch, strings and all. if you're happy with it being okay, and are on a budget, then i guess you could start working on the relief with the old strings, but i doubt it will be anywhere close when you put the new strings on. after two years, those strings are not going to react anything like a fresh set will, as far as what kind of pull they put on the neck. also, if the guitar has been set to D for a while, you may want to let the guitar settle for a day after adjusting the truss rod a small amount. you want to do this because while the neck will react somewhat immediately after turning the rod, the effect will be more pronounced after leaving it alone for awhile and you will be able to avoid going back and forth several times trying to get it right. that's another reason you should just buy two sets of strings and use one new set to setup and get the guitar going and then a fresh set when you're ready to rock.

Yeah Charlie, but if it's heel-adjust truss rod, you're going to have to take the neck off a few times to get it right. If you put the new strings on first you could find that a couple will break after they've been through the tuning/detuning cycle a couple of times. Why risk it with new strings? There's no need unless you are changing gauge, then you must put new strings on first...

[DesertRose]

I'll just send it to the luthier, tell him the problem, get him to set it up and whatever. Then from then on replace the strings my self

[octavedoctor]

Get it playing OK with the existing strings, tuned to E. Put the new strings on.

Then, go to my post on Rainmaker's Intonation thread in The Vault section of this forum, and follow everything step by step. Remember, intonation is always the last step, after saddle adjustments and trussrod adjustments.

You are so correct...

Your post on that thread is probably the best I read but i have issues with some of the others.

I found out a while ago that using the 12th fret as a reference point produced innaccurate intonation. The reasoning behind this is easy to understand but hard to explain, but i'll try, in a nutshell.

The whole issue rests on the presence of arc relief.

Traditionally we extend the free vibrating length of a string to compensate for the slight increase in tension resulting from the string being displaced from its rest position to the fret. We do this by moving the saddle away from the frets by a small amount.

In a guitar with a dead straight neck the string breaks from the fingerboard at a steep angle to allow the strings vibration arc envelope to avoid crashing the fret crowns in the critical first quarter of the string's length. The distance between the string and each fret then increases at a more-or-less linear rate as one moves up the fingerboard.

The compensation introduced at the saddle is a fixed amount, but as such represents an increasing percentage of the strings free vibrating length (I'll acronym this to FVL to save space and time).

For a dead straight neck, the rate of increase in proportional compensation represented by the saddle displacement and the rate of increase in tension due to string displacement are broadly equivalent; the curves don't match exactly, but they are so close as to be insignificant in their differences.

In modern guitars with truss rods and stuff we have a degree of control over the shape of the neck. We can finely adjust the arc that the string's tension pulls in the neck so that it closely follows that of the string's arc, allowing us to get the string closer to the fingerboard in the higher reaches without buzzing in the lower reaches. The presence of this arc significantly changes the aspect angle of the string to the fingerboard which is no longer constant. Put simply, above the 12th fret the string and the fingerboard are more or less parallel so that the displacement experienced by the string is, from this point onwards, fairly constant. The percentage compensation of the FVL represented by the fixed displacement of the saddle continues to increase above the 12th fret however and the effect of this is that the string is being progressively overcompensated from this point on.

A guitar compensated at the 12th fret will therefore exhibit increasingly flat intonation above the 12th fret.

I have also found that if the nut is cut to the correct elevation the first three frets are also being overcompensated so that these few frets sound very slightly flat.

The observant will notice that this is in direct contradiction to some of the traditional claims made for first fret sharpness which, IMO, is mythological and based on a misunderstanding of the limitations inherent in equal temperament and constant ratio fretting.

The solution, which I have used since 1985, is to temper the intonation using reference harmonics at the 5th and 12th frets against fretted notes at the 3rd, 7th, 17th and 19th (or 20th) frets. I won't bore you with it here...

[octavedoctor]

Incidentally, the prohibition against using harmonics is about tuning the strings using reference harmonics at the 5th and 7th frets on adjacent strings. Because the 7th fret harmonic is a natural perfect 5th above the first harmonic, which is the root note of the string's harmonic series, it is not part of the equal temperament scale which uses a slightly compressed 5th, so that tuning the guitar using relative harmonics will result in a compressed major third between the B and G.

The reason it is inadvisable to use a tuner is because the tuner only meters the the fundamental. Human perception uses the whole harmonic spectrum to assess pitch and as a tuner cannot accomodate this it can't tell you how "in tune" the note sounds. Inharmonicity (progressive expansion of the intervals of the harmonic spectrum due to the effect of tensile and compressive forces contained within the body of the string's core wire) can cause us to hear notes that are actually theoretically exact as sounding flat, so it's important not to be distracted by those little needles and LEDs; they are not us...

[CharlieNC]

well, don't change strings if you think that's okay. i'm not saying that it's the definitive way to do things. i just go by what Dan Erlewine recommends in the "Guitar Player Repair Guide." but whatever floats your boat!