How to Change your Banjo Strings

One of my music goals for this year is to get better at and more comfortable with banjo string changes. I have a custom made 5-string tenor banjo with five equal length strings so at least I don't have to deal with re-stringing that short drone or thumb string, but otherwise everything else is the same. You hook the loop end of the string at the tailpiece and run it through the tuner at the headstock. Banjos and mandolins with floating bridges are similar in this regard.

Let me say this. I am not good at changing strings. I sweat and agonize over it, and I have to make an effort to remain calm while doing it. And it takes me like 45 minutes. But that is about to change with practice and a new mindset. This is not a post by me telling you how to change banjo strings because I am not qualified to do that. I am simply sharing some articles that I found helpful and will want to refer back to later.

Whenever I have had a luthier or shop tech do a string change for me, the instrument always came back with the new strings winded (wound?) two or three revolutions or more around the tuner. This looks pretty but I just don't see myself doing that. Fortunately there's a simpler method where you simply lock-in the string. 

Here's a link to a page demonstrating this step by step. What I like about this is it's written as an article with pictures. That works better for me than a video.

http://frets.com/FretsPages/Musician/Banjo/BanjoStringing/banjostr2.html

I actually think his mandolin restringing article from the same site is equally if not more helpful.

http://frets.com/FretsPages/Musician/Mandolin/MandoString/mandostring1.html

I'll be checking these out the next time I change strings!

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