How to string a bass guitar

On friday night Dear Heart suggested that he teach me how to restring a bass guitar. Given that (a) January is sobriety month so no trip to the pub in the offing, (b) Dear Heart has owned the bass for about five years and has never restrung it and (c) it was something I wanted to learn, I agreed with enthusiasm.

Things went well to start with. Dear Heart demonstrated how to remove the strings. My performance in this area was excellent and I was able to remove three without any damage to the body of the guitar. We cleaned up the fret boards with no problems.

Then we moved onto the tricky bit. Putting new strings on. Dear Heart started with the E string and demonstrated how to thread it into place and wrap it around the machinehead. Then he revealed that the strings would need stretching. A quick demo later and he left me to do the other three while he did some drum practice.

All went well on the A string, but made over confident by my success I broke the D string. After a moment of panic I calmly put the G string into place and then returned to the dilemma of the D string.

It was while trying to discover if I could manage to stretch this string enough to get it to work that it bit me. Yes, the sharp end of the string embedded itself in my thumb and drew blood. I only realised how much it was bleeding when I started wondering what the red stuff on the machine heads and the tuner was.

Obviously if this was a Stephen King novel the guitar would now have a taste for blood (following a curse) and be reading to shred to pieces the fingers of the next unfortunate to play it (sort of like The Red Shoes). Happily this is not a Stephen King novel.

Dear Heart advised putting the old D string back in place and purchasing new strings ASAP. I know understand why he always wants people to buy them for Christmas or birthdays.

So that’s one bass guitar restrung. It really is amazing how different new strings sound.

There’s just one thing that I still want to know. Are there are any crafting activities that reuse guitar strings?