Re: Stringing Techniques
The technique I use is called the piano maker wrap (sounds like a good title for a song..) although I routinely call it the Rickenbacker wrap because i pinched the idea from the techs at the Rickenbacker factory who use it when they are stringing guitars from scratch. Anyone whose tried it will know why.
It goes like this:
Attach the string to the bridge or tailpiece and pull it tight.
From the side opposite to the button, wrap the string around the tuner post between one and six times depending on the gauge of the string and the height of the tuner post. Some tuners, like the ones with the staggered post heights currently fitted to US Fenders, require less wraps for the thinner strings than conventional ones with uniform heights. It's important to keep the string under as much tension as possible while doing this. Wind the coil uniformly from the bottom of the post upwards making sure you have no crossed coils.
Hold the coil in place with your thumb and push the free end of the string through the eye of the tuner post then grab the free end and pull it through as tightly as you can then tug it back in the opposite direction to the tuner posts rotation to put a kink in the string so that it forms a Z shape where it goes through the tuner post's eye.
Give the string a tug to consolidate the wrap then bring it up to tension.
The aim is to have a neat, even wrap about the same depth as the tuner post's eye. the post's geometry causes all the coils to bunch up and trap the free end of the string against the top of the eye.
The method has several advantages; it's very quick - my record for stringing a Les Paul is three and a half minutes - and very secure. Because most of the wrap is done by hand the tuner is only used for the final stage of tuning, reducing wear and tear on the tuner's gearing. Because the tension of the string is distributed through the friction of the wrap (coils compress the tuner post over a length between 25 and 75mm and experience compression from at least one neighbouring coil as well) the load is taken off the edge of the eye, resulting in less string breakage and less risk of burring of the eye's edge from the string. Finally, the string is very easy to remove, requiring less force (or less delicate surgery, depending on your approach!) to remove the string from the tuner.
Incidentally, the Fender vintage tuners with the split post were designed to use a variant of this wrap.
BTW guys, I wasn't trying to dis Scott's post; the only part of the stringing technique I don't approve of is the reverse hitch where it is looped under the wrap: that's the bit that causes the problems. Everything else that's been said here about neatness etc. I'm in complete agreement with.
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. Those phosphor-bronze strings sounded brassy & harsh to my ears.
