Zac's Hacks - How To Best String Your Vintage Style Telecaster - Ask Zac 110

well hello friends and welcome to
0:15
another Ask Zac today we are going to
0:18
show how i
0:20
like to string stretch and tune up
0:24
a telecaster and doing this because i
0:27
got a lot of questions about this ask
0:29
him after my setup video that i did set
0:32
up hacks video last year
0:34
and emails kept coming in
0:36
and
0:37
at first i thought this was kind of too
0:40
i don't know a little too basic but then
0:42
i started really thinking about it
0:44
and all the things i do to string and
0:47
stretch up on on on a telecaster
0:50
specifically these are things I've
0:51
learned over a long period of time 30
0:53
years of of playing these things and
0:56
being around really smart guys like dan
0:58
erlawn and joe glazer and benny Garcia
1:02
who was Vince gill's uh tech who's
1:05
passed away a year or two ago
1:07
uh
1:08
yeah so i learned learned all these
1:10
things and so this is an opportunity for
1:12
me to you know pass those things on and
1:14
show how i like to string up a guitar
1:17
uh the first thing we're going to talk
1:19
about is strings
1:21
so you know of course you might have
1:22
your string of choice and
1:25
I'm just going to put in a little plug
1:26
for diaderio nyxl 10 through 46.
1:31
this is what i use whenever I'm gigging
1:34
and the reason i do is because once they
1:36
stretch in they uh they they stay in
1:39
tune well they feel good and i can do up
1:42
to four shows like four four hour shows
1:45
on these sets of strings and they don't
1:48
get funky feeling and they don't start
1:50
sounding weird they they re they're very
1:52
consistent and uh so that's what i use
1:55
so that's uh that's enough about that
1:57
let's let's dive into the actual uh
2:00
the work of this um
2:03
first thing I'm gonna say is that
2:05
i change the strings one at a time and
2:08
the reason i do that
2:10
is that
2:11
especially on a three saddle you know
2:13
telecaster bridge
2:16
these things can move around uh
2:19
you know when you take off both strings
2:21
at the same time so I'll just take one
2:23
off because when i have these things
2:25
intonated and sounding good uh you know
2:27
i don't want to be you know changing you
2:30
know more than one string at a time
2:32
oh
2:33
and let's let's go ahead and dive in so
2:35
my
2:36
my handy
2:38
cameraman my son Luke is going to help
2:40
us out and so he's going to uh
2:42
pull pulling the old camera on to the on
2:45
to the headstock
2:47
all right
2:49
so now we're just gonna
2:51
take this string off
2:54
got my old uh
2:57
peg winder here
2:59
and then i have these string cutters
3:01
that i stole from my mom when i was 13
3:04
years old and i haven't given them back
3:06
yet so she used these to do flower
3:08
arrangements
3:10
and
3:10
so she doesn't know this until she sees
3:12
this episode she's not going to know
3:14
that i stole these from her
3:17
so just cut that off
3:22
pull it through
3:24
give it a little
3:26
wind up so that it throws away well
3:31
and then uh i'm going to open up this
3:33
package
3:40
find the one with the
3:42
brass end on it
3:45
see here it is
3:48
they uh
3:49
pair these up on the on the diaderio's
3:52
so I'm going to pull out the
3:55
one with the brass ball end
3:58
and are going to
4:00
take it
4:02
through the guitar
4:07
the old 57 esquire
4:11
okay
4:12
here comes
4:13
the first big lesson
4:16
okay
4:17
so here's the string post I'm gonna go
4:19
two past it
4:20
and I'm gonna cut it right here at the
4:22
end
4:23
okay now some people will say to go
4:25
three
4:27
but you don't want to do that
4:28
because
4:30
the more windings you have here the more
4:33
it has to stretch out and it's even
4:35
worse with these wound strings because
4:37
you have a core and then you have
4:38
windings around it so you just want to
4:41
put
4:42
the minimum
4:44
on here
4:45
and that way it doesn't have as long to
4:47
uh to stretch out
4:49
so i put down the end down into the the
4:52
split shaft tuners which you know that's
4:54
what we're dealing here with vintage
4:55
style telecasters
4:57
and
4:58
going to
5:00
bend that down
5:02
and then I'm going to
5:05
wind it up
5:16
now another thing you'll you'll notice
5:17
you know again those get those
5:19
proponents of the three
5:21
they'll say you need a bunch of windings
5:23
but you really don't two windings is
5:25
plenty
5:26
to
5:27
hold the string in place so there you go
5:29
with the with the low e string now we're
5:32
going to move on to the a string
5:38
same thing
5:40
at this point
5:42
I'll talk about the nut a little bit
5:45
so
5:45
some guys like to use uh you know some
5:48
type of lubricant in the in the nut you
5:51
know they like to put stuff down in
5:53
there
5:54
i don't like to too much because
5:57
that can actually deaden the string if
5:59
you get like a bunch in there so i only
6:01
put a lubricant and so this is big ben's
6:04
nut sauce which has a that's quite the
6:06
interesting name
6:08
but uh yeah i'll use it when i start
6:10
having an issue
6:12
so i really don't like to gunk up the
6:14
nut
6:16
all right so we're pulling
6:18
the old string through
6:21
wrapping it up
6:24
setting it aside here we have our a
6:26
string
6:33
pull it on through
6:37
okay and again
6:39
here we have the split shaft for the a
6:42
tuner we're going to go two past it so
6:44
there we have two
6:46
take the
6:47
stolen string cutters
6:51
set that aside
6:53
here we go down in the hole again
7:17
alrighty
7:19
and we're on to the
7:22
d string
7:53
we need the string with the black
7:56
ball end
7:57
so
7:58
see I've
7:59
done enough of these d'addario strings
8:01
that i remember the uh
8:03
the different color codes
8:08
so at this point
8:10
i want to talk a little bit about the
8:12
saddles over here
8:14
and that's um
8:16
these saddles
8:19
which let me get this string through
8:21
first and I'm going to pause for a
8:23
second
8:24
so
8:26
these saddles over here
8:29
they uh
8:31
you know some people will put
8:32
compensated saddles or other things like
8:34
that these are these these are the
8:36
original steel saddles from 1957. you
8:39
can see they've got a lot of corrosion
8:41
on them
8:42
one of the issues that you can have with
8:43
these type of saddles
8:45
is that they will get
8:47
like a burr on them
8:48
and what your string will start to sound
8:50
like a sitar and usually this happens
8:52
with the high e string and what happens
8:54
is that you get a bur on the saddle
8:57
and it starts vibrating against that and
8:59
it starts sounding again like a sitar
9:02
the way to fix that
9:04
is you have to take the saddle
9:06
completely off the guitar so you have to
9:09
pull this screw out and you have to pull
9:11
these two screws out and so usually i
9:12
will mark it
9:14
you know with with painters tape so i
9:16
can get it back in the right position
9:17
and then i'll also take measurements so
9:19
i can get the height back
9:21
but you have to take these off
9:23
and then you can either get a fine grit
9:25
sandpaper or you can get fine grit steel
9:27
wool
9:28
and while you have the saddle you know
9:30
with all the screws removed then you can
9:32
put it inside of there and you can spin
9:34
it around because you want to spin it
9:35
around because you don't want there to
9:36
be flat spots
9:38
you can get rid of the burr
9:40
and then
9:41
you've got a
9:42
a good sounding telecaster again
9:44
another little trick on this is let's
9:48
say you have the old style saddles that
9:50
are not compensated you can make them
9:52
compensated
9:54
by bending this screw
9:57
and what that entails
9:59
is just taking a set of pliers
10:01
and
10:02
coming down on here and just giving it a
10:04
slight
10:05
you know turn you're just trying to bend
10:07
the screw just a touch
10:09
and what that does is as you
10:12
as you turn this screw it'll actually
10:14
make it kind of go back and forth and
10:16
you'll be able to get it into a good
10:17
spot and you might have to try it once
10:19
or twice
10:20
to get it into a
10:22
enough of a bend but you want to bend it
10:24
as close to the saddle as you can so all
10:26
right let's get back to stringing so
10:28
we've got the d string through
10:31
again we're going to get it through the
10:32
nut we're going to get it past
10:35
you know it's actual split shaft we're
10:37
going to go to past it we're going to
10:38
cut it
10:43
set that
10:44
down put it down in there
10:48
bend it down
10:54
and proceed
11:03
see we always want to make sure that
11:04
we're
11:06
getting our our wraps going underneath
11:08
each other you don't have anything
11:09
skipping back over you don't want to do
11:12
that all right
11:14
now in the next string on the next
11:16
string everything's going to change okay
11:19
because
11:21
on this string
11:23
we want to get as much downward pressure
11:24
as possible and we're actually going to
11:26
put as many windings as we can if you
11:28
can see here on the old string you've
11:31
got a lot of windings there
11:33
and that's because
11:35
these old telecasters were designed
11:38
with the stream gauges that were being
11:40
used at that point and so those strings
11:43
had a wound third instead of an unwound
11:46
third that's kind of the standard is an
11:47
unwound third at this point
11:49
so because of the old string sets they
11:52
just had this string tree
11:54
to get good downward pressure
11:56
on the e and b because you didn't need
11:58
it for a wound third but now that we're
12:00
using this unwound third
12:03
you know there's different things you
12:04
can do well what fender did in 1972
12:07
was they added a second string tree and
12:10
you
12:11
i don't think that's really the right
12:12
thing to do on a vintage guitar
12:15
because you'll be drilling another hole
12:17
in it the other thing you can do is joe
12:19
glazer through his music city bridge
12:22
store you can get these uh
12:25
string trees that will hold three
12:26
strings down
12:28
and they're really neat
12:30
but they kind of changed the look of the
12:31
guitar and so I've done that with some
12:33
of my other guitars because this is a 57
12:35
esquire I'm not going to do that so on
12:37
this one I'm going to break with
12:39
tradition and I'm going to put a lot
12:41
more
12:42
windings down on the string so let's uh
12:44
let's take off the old string first
12:55
[Music]
13:00
and we're also going to learn how to
13:02
lock the string in place
13:06
you're gonna love this so this is a
13:08
trick
13:10
i either learned learned it from lindy
13:12
freylin
13:13
or dan irlowen or
13:16
or could be joe glazer joe glazer showed
13:18
it to me again
13:20
last time i was at his shop so I'm going
13:22
to say joe glazer we're going to say joe
13:24
glazer taught me how to do this and so
13:26
this is a string locking method that you
13:28
can do on your unwound strings
13:31
and I'm going to show you how to do that
13:34
first we got to put the
13:36
string through
13:37
[Music]
13:43
put the
13:44
guitar down
13:46
and i'm gonna get up and come over here
13:49
and so
13:51
i'm gonna give it about
13:53
i'm gonna give it
13:54
i'm gonna come off of the guitar
13:57
about
13:58
you know a couple inches
14:00
so that i have plenty of of string
14:03
length to deal with
14:04
i'm going to cut that
14:07
okay
14:08
and here's where things are going to get
14:09
real interesting
14:12
so
14:14
let's let's come in on this on this
14:16
string
14:17
on this tuner shaft
14:19
and I'm going to put the string
14:23
down in the hole
14:26
and then I'm going to bend it down
14:29
I'm going to pull it around
14:31
then I'm going to pull it
14:33
back through
14:36
the canyon and down
14:38
okay
14:39
then I'm going to get the tuner
14:43
and I'm going to start winding it and
14:44
making sure it goes underneath now I'm
14:45
going to show you this again
14:47
on the b and e strings so you know this
14:49
but this is a a string locking method
14:53
that helps keep the string in place
14:55
and I've found it very handy and again
14:58
I've used this for
15:00
uh
15:01
at least at least 15 years
15:04
and it's been a good method for me and
15:06
for anyone else I've
15:09
helped out
15:10
all right so let's move on to the
15:14
the b
15:14
string
15:16
we're going to do the same thing
15:28
cut it off
15:34
pull it through
15:48
and we're going to get the
15:50
purple ball end
15:52
that's the one for the b string on the
15:56
the old d'addario sets
16:03
through the body
16:08
okay
16:09
now here
16:11
because we're dealing with a string that
16:13
has
16:14
a string tree to hold it down we don't
16:17
need to put as many winds
16:19
as we did on the uh
16:22
on the g string so I'm gonna cut off
16:26
about
16:27
i don't know
16:29
see about about three inches maybe on
16:31
off the end
16:34
put that down
16:35
and then
16:36
let's get a
16:38
let's get another look at this of the
16:40
string locking method
16:43
okay
16:44
put the string down in the hole
16:46
bend it down
16:47
come around
16:48
then we come back through the canyon and
16:51
underneath that part of the string
16:54
and down
16:55
I'm holding it in place with my thumb
16:59
and here we go
17:12
and the final string
17:15
[Music]
17:28
string comes out back
17:34
our final
17:45
pull string through
17:48
and then here we're going to go
17:51
and I'm going to and i find it easiest
17:55
if i uh
17:58
pull it have it where the the the split
18:00
shaft is going
18:02
you know kind of north to south or you
18:04
know toward the uh the bridge and the
18:06
rest of the body
18:07
so again
18:09
one more angle of me putting it down in
18:10
the hole
18:11
bending it down
18:13
coming around
18:14
coming
18:15
through the canyon and down underneath
18:18
the other part of the string
18:26
and I'm holding it so that it uh
18:29
stays underneath the string tree I'm
18:31
already seeing that my b string is not
18:33
underneath the string tree and i need to
18:34
of course correct that I'll do that in a
18:36
moment
18:40
big thanks go out to my uh cameraman son
18:44
Luke Childs who's helping me today
18:46
and uh if you want to you know if you
18:48
want to tip him you can
18:50
you can put put it put in a tip and say
18:52
uh
18:53
it's to Luke
18:55
all right son come around to the front
19:01
all right
19:03
so now
19:07
we have the strings on and so i'm going
19:10
to get you know a little handy uh
19:13
you know clip-on tuner
19:17
and
19:18
I'm going to go ahead and get it in the
19:19
playing position
19:24
let's see it's a c
19:26
[Music]
19:33
so I'm going to rough in all these
19:34
strings
19:38
now tune them to pitch
19:40
[Music]
19:49
they don't have to be exactly on
19:52
but i want to get them close
19:54
[Music]
19:56
and here comes one of the most important
19:58
things you can do
20:00
that you need to do
20:01
and that's stretching the strings okay
20:05
so what i's going to do I'm going to put
20:06
the guitar back
20:08
kind of on on the bench
20:10
and one of the things you want to do or
20:13
what you don't want to do is you don't
20:14
want to
20:15
stretch them too hard because you don't
20:17
want to put a kink in the string
20:19
so i will just
20:20
you know kind of gently pull up
20:22
the entire length of the string and I'll
20:25
even bend it a little right here behind
20:26
the nut
20:27
and i go on
20:32
i kind of enjoy hitting you know us
20:36
just for fun
20:38
makes me think I'm jerry Donahue not
20:41
really i
20:41
no one could play like jerry Donahue
20:44
uh
20:45
what a what a great player and his but
20:49
behind the nut bins were amazing
20:53
all right
20:54
so now
20:56
I'm going to
20:59
tune up
21:01
again
21:02
and now I'm going to concentrate on each
21:04
string by itself
21:06
and I'm going to keep stretching it
21:09
until it stops shifting
21:12
until i can
21:14
do this
21:15
and the pitch doesn't waver
21:20
[Music]
21:31
[Music]
21:40
[Music]
21:48
wow
21:49
[Music]
22:07
and again another reason i really like
22:09
these diaderio nyxls is they don't take
22:12
a lot of stretching in
22:14
to uh to get
22:17
to a good place and
22:19
i really like that
22:21
so the last stretching exercise I'm
22:24
gonna do
22:25
is
22:26
I'm just gonna uh I'm gonna do some
22:28
actual bending and so I'll I'll start up
22:31
high you know maybe around the 15th fret
22:34
or something like that and I'll just go
22:39
[Music]
22:53
and I'll check it again I'll put it back
22:56
up here
22:57
now
22:58
i'm just doing this for for you know
23:00
most you don't want to tune in this
23:02
position because it won't then it won't
23:03
be in tune when it's upright like you're
23:06
in the playing position but i'm just
23:07
doing this for the video
23:09
uh another uh kind of uh
23:12
some little tuner pointers
23:14
and about tuning
23:16
um
23:17
is
23:18
i don't ever tune to harmonics i think
23:21
that's not helpful
23:23
i will either tune to open strings or
23:25
i'll attune to fretted notes
23:27
and sometimes i will tune
23:29
to the fretted notes on the third fret
23:32
because it helps kind of temper this
23:34
whole area uh
23:37
yeah
23:38
and you you get it stretched out
23:41
and you get in tune and then you're uh
23:44
you're ready to go
23:45
all right
23:46
well that's that's my methodology and i
23:49
hope it helps
23:51
the string lock and you know stretching
23:54
them in properly i think that
23:56
will take you far we'll see you next
23:58
time thanks bye