Fiddle Care Tip 1: Stringing Your Fiddle
Oct 12th, 2008 by Jim
Sooner or later, your fiddle strings are going to wear out. Sorry. No way around it (except to stop playing–bad idea). They fray or unravel, and old strings can sound really awful. Sometimes beginners mistakenly blame their bad tone on their “beginnerness,” when the real culprit is worn out strings. If you’ve reached the point where you can’t avoid changing strings any longer, here’s how to go about it:
Open the packet and make sure all four strings are there and that they are called G, D, A and E, bottom to top. Don’t get them mixed up (the D and A can look a lot alike; but they’re not). Now take a good look at the peg box on your fiddle. You want to make sure you have a good mental image of which string connects to which peg. Here is what you should see. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Peg_in_box.jpg I recently found this image on a forum at fiddlehangout.com (which is a website that should be on the favorites list of any aspiring fiddler, BTW). This picture does a great job of illustrating just what is going on in the peg box. Notice that each string is wound over the top of its peg, and that the A string passes over the top of the D string peg-not under it.
Now, you should change only one string at a time. DO NOT take off all the old strings before you put any new ones on. Why? Because you want to keep as much pressure on your top as you can while you are changing the strings. This is important because it is the downward pressure created by all four of your strings that keeps your soundpost in place (It’s the little stick that you can see inside your fiddle if you look through the right f-hole). If the soundpost falls down and starts rattling around inside your instrument, you have a problem that will require professional assistance. Even if it moves only a little, that’s not good; so just make sure you change only one string at a time.
After you change the first string, tune it up to pitch as close as you can before you release the tension on the next one. Use your pitch pipe or electronic tuner if you have one, or click here to get the tones you need.
Once you get all the new strings on, you’ll notice that your fiddle won’t stay in tune very well. It’ll take a couple of days before your instrument gets used to its new strings. After that, you should be back to fiddling, and with the new strings you’ll be thinking: “Wow! I sound fantastic!”
