It's been a while...
I realized that's been a long while since I restrung my Tele. Now that I don't do a lot of rehearsals and gigs due to COVID-19, I've been slacking off when it comes to giving proper maintenance to my instruments.
The strings on my Tele got to the point where they were so rough that I was actually afraid I'd end up cutting my fingertips so I finally decided to take some time this weekend to put some new strings and I thought I'd share my process here.
Favorite strings
My strings of choice are Ernie Ball. I use them on all my guitars because I just love how they sound, they last long enough and they don't break on me too often. The gauge may vary from guitar to guitar, but it's always Ernie Ball.
On my Tele, I usually go with Ernie Ball Ultra Slinky, as shown by my lovely assistant:
I really like this set because the first 3 strings are the same ones you find on a regular 10 set (10, 13, 17) and the last 3 are slightly thicker (28, 38, 48). This gives me a little more punch for those heavy riffs and chords without me having to move to a heavier set altogether. But enough about my strings. Let's get to it.
My process
The first thing, obviously, is to remove the old strings. I have locking tuners on most of my guitars and because of that, I need to unlock the strings first. I used to do that with a pick, but recently I found out that a coin is much better so I've been using them now instead.
Once the locks are loosened a bit, it's time to unwind the strings. I have a handy little tool by Jim Dunlop that's really helpful for unwinding and winding strings back. There are also electric versions that do all the work for you, but this one is already a lot of help.
When I'm not doing a full setup on the instrument, I usually prefer to replace the strings 2 by 2, so the tension on the neck doesn't change that much.
After I remove two of the strings, I give a good wipe to the fretboard, pickups and bridge area. A lot of gunk accumulates in those areas so it's important to clean them well.
Once I'm happy with the cleaning, I put on fresh strings. Because I use locking tuners, I don't really wind them too much on the tuning machines. The locks do a great job keeping them in place so I just lock them in and use pliers to cut off the excess pieces of string in the end.
From there, it's just rinse and repeat! I like to tune all the fresh strings every time I put a new one because they do take a while to settle after I put them on but once they do, they remain in tune for a while unless I do some crazy bends or stuff like that. That's what I love about custom build instruments and locking tuners: they just stay in tune.
And that's pretty much it! Nothing beats the feeling of playing a guitar with fresh strings on it! If I had the money and time, I'd put a new set every time I sat down to play guitar!