Restringing the Stagg guitar

The day that I bought the guitar, I wrote The intonation seems ok although there was some buzz when I played the bottom string on its own - I'll rub some graphite into the nut when I change strings, which will probably be soon. Restringing day has come and I thought that I would write about it, as it has some differences from restringing the Washburn or any other guitar that I own.

The first difference is that the strings are "through body": this means that instead of having the strings anchored behind the bridge, as shown in the accompanying picture, they are fed through the body of the guitar from the other side. To quote a random person from the internet, I do think that the string through design puts more of the string into contact with the surface of the bridge saddle, and that probably helps keep the string from sliding around. 

This meant, of course, that I had to extract the strings via the holes pictured on the back of the guitar. Five strings came out easily but one got stuck and it took no small amount of fiddling before I could pull this string out. 

The other problem is also another 'Fender feature': the Washburn et al. have a tilted headstock with three strings of each side that helps maintain tension on the strings. But Fender, in their wisdom, have six strings in a line without a tilted headstock so they make use of a string tree. As the Stagg copies the Telecaster design, it too has a straight headstock albeit with two string trees.

I thought that I would have to remove the string trees in order to remove the strings, but it turns out that once the tension is reduced on the string, it can be pulled out from under the tree. I'll remember that for next time.

Normally I would clean the fretboard after removing old strings and before adding the new strings, but as this is a new guitar, there was no need for this. I did discover, however, that there was plastic film covering the neck pickup, as there was for the bridge pickup. I removed this film before continuing.

When all the strings were off, I rubbed a pencil on the nut: this is supposed to increase friction and prevent buzzing. Then I put the new strings on, starting from the lowest and up to the highest. For a change I had bough "Fender" strings; normally each string in a set comes in its own envelope, but here there were three sets of two strings round together. One differentiates between the strings by the different coloured ball at the end of the string (this holds the string in place at the back of the guitar).

Here I could have done with three hands: one hand to hold the guitar, one hand to thread the string through the body and out through the saddle on the other side, and one hand to pull the string. I managed to thread the strings through the body, over the nut, under the tree strings and into the machine heads without too much trouble. After leaving the guitar for a few minutes to settle, I then approximately tuned the guitar, although I know that I will have to do this again tomorrow.

There is a nasty rattle coming from the bridge when I play any of the strings. I think that this is because the strings aren't sitting properly in the saddle - this is much more obvious on a 'normal' bridge. I pushed each string down just in front of each saddle in the hope of reducing this horrible sound (that probably won't be amplified). I'll see how it sounds tomorrow.

So I've now learnt how to restring the Stagg. For those who care about these things, I'm using a 10 - 46 set.

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