DrNewcenstein
He Did the Monster Mash
Re: Stringing a floyd rose: Ball end at the tuners?
Ball ends at the tuners, then cut off the excess when I'm done with all 6.
I start by removing all the old strings, then start at the low E. Feed it through just to where the saddle locks are (trim as needed, since it's not always a clean cut at the factory).
Pull the string fairly taut and tighten the tuner just to hold it in place.
Repeat for the A.
For the D, I loop it around the tuning post after it's locked in the saddle, to give me a head start on tuning and to hold itself in place.
The plain strings also get one pre-loop, but I leave more slack - about 2" from the ball.
I hold the plain strings taut with one hand while I tighten them at the tuner. Keeps the winds coiled under each other going down the post. I don't scatterwind them, as they slip too much during tuning.
Once they're all taut and I'm ready to tune them all up, I clip the ball ends close to the peg - maybe 1/16" above them. This way I don't have sharp points catching my fingers when I'm working with the adjacent strings. Sometimes I wait and clip them after it's all tuned and stretched.
I've seen people pull the balls all the way to the peg, with the twists in the hole, and yeah, that's the wrong way to do it because you'll chew the hole up.
However, that's the only "wrong" way to do it. Just because fixed-bridge guitars require loading with the ball end at the bridge does not mean double-locking trems do. The strings are not tapered from the ball to the end, as some idiot once tried to tell me, so you can clip both ends and feed them through from either direction.
Bass strings you can find tapered that way, but not guitar strings (unless it's those ultra-bottom sets for trunk-rattling Metal).
Concerning the why and wherefore of this method, back in the 80s, some string sets came with excess core sticking out of the end of the wound strings. You'd clip that off, then clip the ball, then string it all up.
Once I started getting sets without the excess core, I found it made for shorter string-changes to just run the tip down to the saddle, lock it in, wind it up, clip and go. While it was only one step, it did save considerable wear on my wire cutters.
I have not noticed a change in tone between the two methods, though someone once pointed out that the winds are "reversed" when you flip the string, and instead of them being wound from the bridge to the nut, the windings go from the nut to the bridge. Not sure of the philosophy behind bringing that up, though. How the pick hits them? You're going against the grain instead of with it? I dunno. Like I said, never noticed a significant change in tone.
As for string life, and on the topic of wind direction, I could speculate that given the fact the string winds go from bridge to nut, when you bend them at the saddle locks, you're stressing the wind from the top, which could result in them unraveling. However, if you run them "backwards", the direction of the windings follows the downward curve into the lock, resulting in less tension on the winding.
However, neither point can be proven or disproven.
Ball ends at the tuners, then cut off the excess when I'm done with all 6.
I start by removing all the old strings, then start at the low E. Feed it through just to where the saddle locks are (trim as needed, since it's not always a clean cut at the factory).
Pull the string fairly taut and tighten the tuner just to hold it in place.
Repeat for the A.
For the D, I loop it around the tuning post after it's locked in the saddle, to give me a head start on tuning and to hold itself in place.
The plain strings also get one pre-loop, but I leave more slack - about 2" from the ball.
I hold the plain strings taut with one hand while I tighten them at the tuner. Keeps the winds coiled under each other going down the post. I don't scatterwind them, as they slip too much during tuning.
Once they're all taut and I'm ready to tune them all up, I clip the ball ends close to the peg - maybe 1/16" above them. This way I don't have sharp points catching my fingers when I'm working with the adjacent strings. Sometimes I wait and clip them after it's all tuned and stretched.
I've seen people pull the balls all the way to the peg, with the twists in the hole, and yeah, that's the wrong way to do it because you'll chew the hole up.
However, that's the only "wrong" way to do it. Just because fixed-bridge guitars require loading with the ball end at the bridge does not mean double-locking trems do. The strings are not tapered from the ball to the end, as some idiot once tried to tell me, so you can clip both ends and feed them through from either direction.
Bass strings you can find tapered that way, but not guitar strings (unless it's those ultra-bottom sets for trunk-rattling Metal).
Concerning the why and wherefore of this method, back in the 80s, some string sets came with excess core sticking out of the end of the wound strings. You'd clip that off, then clip the ball, then string it all up.
Once I started getting sets without the excess core, I found it made for shorter string-changes to just run the tip down to the saddle, lock it in, wind it up, clip and go. While it was only one step, it did save considerable wear on my wire cutters.
I have not noticed a change in tone between the two methods, though someone once pointed out that the winds are "reversed" when you flip the string, and instead of them being wound from the bridge to the nut, the windings go from the nut to the bridge. Not sure of the philosophy behind bringing that up, though. How the pick hits them? You're going against the grain instead of with it? I dunno. Like I said, never noticed a significant change in tone.
As for string life, and on the topic of wind direction, I could speculate that given the fact the string winds go from bridge to nut, when you bend them at the saddle locks, you're stressing the wind from the top, which could result in them unraveling. However, if you run them "backwards", the direction of the windings follows the downward curve into the lock, resulting in less tension on the winding.
However, neither point can be proven or disproven.
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