Are you having problems keeping your guitar in Tune?

If you are having problems keeping your steel string guitar in tune then here's a simple tip that may save you a lot of frustration!

We do a lot of servicing & "restrings"at Concept Music (& I mean a LOT!) & almost every day someone comes in with their guitar telling us "it keeps going out of tune!” & asking us if can perhaps change the machine heads "because they are slipping & need replacing".  In fact this is never the case. In 35 years I've never seen a slipping machine head cause a tuning problem!  A tuner may break or strip or fail completely from time to time but that's different - if they're broken or worn you won't even be able to get the string up to pitch in the first place, but if you can get it up to pitch then it's not slipping. Trust me. 

While there are a number of things that can cause a guitar to go out of tune, by far the most common reason is that it has been restrung with far too many windings of the string around the post.  If your guitar looks like the picture above then your guitar will NEVER stay in tune - you need to take them off & redo them.  NOW!  Strung like that & your tuning will never be stable as the string cannot be properly bedded in & stretched.  And don't be confused or fooled by how long a new string is when you take it out of the packet...  it is not necessary to try & use it all.  Quite the contrary! 

What you are aiming for is something like the image below... where the wound strings go around the post 2 or 3 times at the most & the plain strings 3 or 4 (yes, that’s all!).  Make sure they do not bunch up or cross over each other & make sure the windings go down the post as this will also help keep some downwards pressure on the string in the nut slot.  If you do this & give your new strings a bit of a 'stretch' you'll never have a problem with the pitch continually going flat again.

Still not sure?  You're welcome to bring your guitar in & we'll have a look at it for you... for that matter, we can give it a good all-over service (costing around $50 plus strings).  A service & restring means we will not only put brand new strings on & retune your guitar for you, we will also clean & polish your body & frets, check the truss rod & "action" & go over the whole guitar so that it feels like new again.   

Happy tuning!