Acoustic Guitar Strings & more

jojo2004

Hi Guys,

Just inherited (temporarily) my sister's old Acoustic Guitar, which I think is a pretty decent one. I need to get it restrung, as two strings are missing altogether and the others are all out of tune!

I know NOTHING about acoustic (or any other kind) of guitar, so I'd be really grateful for some advice: do I buy strings and restring myself (the advice I've seen on some websites) even though I've never done it before? Or do i go to a music shop and ask them to do it for me?

On a related note, I want to learn to play it - what's the best way to start learning chords? I'm reasonably musical, but have always played piano/violin and sung before, so not used to chord tabs.

Ta lovely peeps! :A
xx

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I'd suggest restringing it yourself. It's not too tricky and if your going to learn to play you need to learn to restring. What you need to restring it with depends on whether it's an steel string acoustic or a classical guitar with nylon strings.

The_Hallowed_Way

Don't put steel strings on a nylon-strung guitar, and vice versa. It's not that different to restringing a violin, if anything it's easier.

As for chords, well there are a thousand books available and if you input 'guitar chords' into Google you will find many sites which list every conceivable chord.

immoral_angeluk

The strings being out of tune doesn't neccesarily mean they need new strings, you just need to learn how to tune it, but certaintly if 2 are missing anyway it's a better idea to restring the whole lot.

Here's a guide how to restring but you'll need to see what kind of bridge it has or if they're pegs at the bottom (the body end).

http://www.fretnotguitarrepair.com/stringing.htm

Or you could take it into a guitar shop and they'll set up everything on it and restring it for a fee, as it's not just the strings you need to change, there's other things such as the truss rod, action and intonation to consider adjusting too if need be.

Pauley_Paul

It's worth taking it into your local music shop to see whether it needs nylon or steel strings as you shouldn't put steel on a guitar designed for nylon as you can damage the instrument; they should also be able to advise you on putting them on, or will do it for you, usually for a fee.
Incidentally the link in the previous post show how to put steel strings on, it's a bit different for nylon but that's where the shop advice comes in! Get a full set rather than just replacing the broken ones, it's not much more expensive and they should sound better and stay in tune for longer.
There are plenty of free lessons on youtube which will get you off the ground 'though a few lessons cango a long way.

Welcome to the wonderful world of the guitar! Good luck!