Strings Going Out of Tune After a String Change?

After changing guitar strings, you will find that your strings get out of tune very easily for about 1-2 weeks, depending on how much you play and how often you retune. This is due to the fact that new strings stretch, causing them to go out of tune very easily. I want to share a little secret on how to overcome this problem, to save you the constant hassle of having to retune often.

When you put on new strings, you need to stretch them manually, otherwise they will keep going out of tune until they stretch by themselves. There is a very simple and straight forward method of stretching your strings after changing them, which most beginners don't know about, and therefore have to retune almost each time they pick up the guitar.

So get ready, here is a short guitar lesson for beginners on one of the secret tricks of the trade you'll want to carry out after changing guitar strings:

• Face the fretboard, and tuck your index and middle finger below any given string at around fret 20.
• Now place your thumb onto the string, holding it against the fretboard.
• With your thumb holding the string against the fretboard, pull upwards with your index and middle finger, so you are stretching the string.
• Repeat this higher up on the same string in 2 more positions (around fret 13 and fret 6).
• This will cause your string to go out of tune, since you are stretching it. Now tune the string to pitch, and repeat the process on the SAME string, until you don't really need to retune it anymore. Make sure that when you tug on the string, you do it gently, don't want to break it.

Through the above, you will manually stretch the string, and won't have to wait until it stretches by itself. You need to do this with every string whenever you change strings, this will save you the hassle of having to retune it all the time after changing strings.

If it still goes out of tune too often afterwards, you'll probably have an issue with your tuner or tuning pegs, or perhaps you didn't lock the string into position effectively, causing it to loosen around the peg, but the above method will solve the problem of out of tune strings 90% of the time.