Stretching out your brand new strings can help keep them in tune when you play and keep them from breaking as easily.
Now that your guitar has a brand new set of strings, you’ll probably want to play the hell out of it. It’s like that “new car” smell, only for your ears. Obviously, the guitar should be in tune for this, and this is exactly where a lot of players get frustrated. Once the the new strings are on and the guitar is tuned up, the strings immediately go out of tune after strumming once or twice.
A new string’s elasticity makes it almost impossible to maintain a stable tuning. Most players attempt to “break in” the strings by playing a lot, then re-tuning, then playing some more, then re-tuning, and repeating those two steps until the strings stay put. It’s a pain in the neck. There are plenty of guitarists who just accept this as a fact of life about stringed instruments, and repeat this process every time they change strings.
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But there’s a much more straightforward way of getting new strings to stay in tune. Once a new string is on the guitar:
Keep repeating these steps until your pulling doesn’t de-tune the guitar. By stretching the strings before you play, you’ll save yourself hours of playing out of tune.
Stretching the strings out like this can also can help prevent them from breaking. Strings generally break at their weakest points, almost always where the string’s tension is uneven. Stretching the string helps to spread the tension out over the whole string, decreasing the number of weak spots.
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We understand the importance of online privacy and are committed to complying with the EU General Data Protection Regulation. To reflect our commitment, we updated our terms and conditions. By continuing to use , you agree to these updates, and to our cookie policy. Learn MoreIn my view, a little string stretching after you’ve restrung can go a long way towards a more stable guitar. At the very minimum it can speed the natural process of ‘bedding in’ that occurs as you play and it can frequently help identify or resolve problems like an improperly seated ball-end or a string that slips a little because it’s not secured properly at the tuner.
Tune your new strings to pitch. Get your fingers under the string somewhere around the halfway mark (that’d be the 12th fret although I find I’m usually a little higher —it’s not precision engineering and we’re not building rockets here).
See the photo. You don’t need to go nuts on this. Give it a bit of a gentle stretch and then retune that string. Stretch it again. It’ll go flat again but probably by less, this time. Retune it again.
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You don’t need to move up and down the string, stretching individual sections. You don’t need a weird String Stretcherizer 3000® device to run up and down the strings. Just give it a bit of a yank.
String stretching is a weirdly contentious subject. There are those with very strong opinions about what stretching actually does and about the best method — and even the best direction — to stretch strings (if they stretch at all).
I don’t want to sound dismissive here but some subjects attract strong opinions and, while I usually welcome discussions on these articles, this is an area where I don’t want to encourage opinions. If you disagree strongly, cool. Keep doing what you’re doing. It’s entirely possible you’re right. What I’ve presented here is
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There is a school of thought that stretching really stretches the steel strings. That it’s necessary to remove some initial elasticity and bed them in.
Actually, the no-comment disclaimer above notwithstanding, this is an area I am very happy to be educated on. If you have an actual engineering view on this, I’d really love to hear it.
The answer to that probably involves Young’s Modulus and complicated sums with Greek letters and is beyond my repairperson’s brain. I’ve read varying opinions but nothing that’s actually gone much beyond ‘opinion’. It’d be great to hear real, evidence-based, information on this.
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My own view (view only — no real evidence) is that the action of string stretching is primarily about removing slack in the system. The repeated stretching of a string pulls any looseness in the string windings around the post, in the ball-end at the bridge, and anywhere else that some slack might hide.
I feel buoyed in this belief by the fact that even after settling, if you de-tune a string and bring it back to pitch, it will still benefit from a new round of ‘stretching’.
My opinion (definitely an ‘opinion’ only) is that any actual stretching that occurs to the steel of the strings is minimal. Like I say though, I’m really interested in this and happy to be corrected.
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Since first publishing this, I've been emailed by a number of readers saying that they're engineers and that the view I present above is correct — the strings don't actually stretch. I still don't have actual evidence on this, though. So, I'm more convinced but not happy to call it closed.
If you want to buy a string stretching device, or you want to stretch strings in a particular fashion, or you don’t want to stretch at all, brilliant. Do that. Good luck to you.
Any comments that can be summed up as You're wrong or I do this will just be deleted if presented without actual evidence. Emphasis on 'actual' — the blog post of some bloke (like me) with just an opinion doesn't count.
How To Properly Stretch Guitar Strings
However, if you’re someone with some sort of A-Beautiful-Mind information on the actual physics of string-stretching, I’d love to hear from you. Please hit me up in the comments or email and send me stuff with as few Greek letters as possible.This post contains affiliate links, meaning, if you click through and make a purchase, I may earn a commission. This is at no additional cost to you. Learn more.
For years I stretched my guitar strings just like everyone else: by hand. As much as I hated stretching guitar strings this way, I never questioned it because that’s how we all did it–there really was no alternative. And like most things guitar-related, everyone had their own way of stretching guitar strings and all argued that
I eventually settled on MY way, which I call the “bottle opener stretch” (shown below), and this method served me well for many years. You see a demonstration of this in my article: How to Stretch Guitar Strings.
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I use this “bottle opener” motion all along the string. Twist… move up a little. Twist… move up a little. Twist… move up a little. You get the idea.
It seemed to be the best method of all those I’d tried over the years. Regardless, stretching guitar strings was still somewhat imperfect and just kind of a pain in the ass:
Then, one fateful day some years ago I encountered a guitar tech quickly zipping a little black device up and down a fresh set of strings he’d just installed. When I asked him about it, he introduced me to “The String Stretcha.” When he said the word “stretcha” I thought he was trying to be cool with some kind of street slang or something, but that’s
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I did a little homework, watched a few demo videos online, and thought it looked pretty cool. I was mainly impressed with the company’s claims of how quickly you could “properly and thoroughly” stretch all your guitar strings and actually be done with it–not have to continue retuning as was usually the case with stretching guitar strings by hand. That, combined with the guitar tech’s testimonial, convinced me to buy one and give it a try.
It’s probably easier to show you how The String Stretcha works than to try and describe it, so I’ll do both. It essentially applies a similar kind of “bottle opener” pressure that I’d been doing with my hands all those years. The big difference is that it slides this pressure evenly up and down the string, unlike using your fingers to make dozens of of little twists all along the string.
Once the string is seated in the two contact points of the Stretcha, move it as close to the bridge as possible. This’ll be your starting point. Then, lift slightly and angle your hand back a bit (like pulling a lever). Slide The String Stretcha all the way down the string toward the nut, and then all the way back to the bridge.
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Keep sliding till you reach the nut, then slide backwards–back to the bridge. Note: In this photo I’m pulling the string further off the fretboard here than is really necessary
Once you get back to the bridge, remove the Stretcha from the string and tune it back up to pitch. Now run the Stretcha back up and down the string one more time. Tune, and you’re done. Move onto the next string. Wash, rinse, repeat.
The manufacturer does not recommend making more than 2 passes on each string, claiming that
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