[Drew]

Originally Posted by desertdweller

That's cool I say that because my opinion isn't everybody's. My opinion is what works best for me (and Satriani, Vai, Skolnick, Petrucci, Gilbert, et al).

Oh, it's a sweet rhetorical move- it takes an opinion thas clearly your own and depersonalizes it by throwing it in the passive tense- it sort of exists outside you that way, not as YOUR opinion, but as an opinion you've heard that a bunch of other people have.

I like it.

-D

[sepsis311]

Tune and stretch, repeat a few times. Don't lock the nut till the next day. Tune, then lock, then fine tune. Start Low B to High E. Works like a charm every time, especially if you keep your guitar clean.

[keithb]

My restringing process:

Take off old string, put on new one (always do one string at a time)
Tune to pitch
Grab string at mid-scale and stretch quite a bit (carefully!)
Retune
Repeat until the string stays at pitch
Then make sure everything is still in tune, and lock the nut.

After the initial tuning while restringing, the only time I have to retune is slight adjustments when the environment changes (especially temperature).

I don't remember the last time I had to unlock and tune. A properly set up quality floating trem should be dead stable all the time.

[JJ Rodriguez]

Every other string change I like to block the bridge, and clean the sides of the frets and the little tiny crevasses with a toothbrush to get rid of all the built up crap, then clean the fret board and oil it and let it sit for a little bit, and wipe off any extra. After that I stick new strings on it and go nuts. I don't usually do a whole lot of stretching, but then again I don't usually go nuts on the trem, just because I suck at lead and every time I do dives and stuff it doesn't sound all that smooth. I don't notice any tuning instability so it's not an issue for me.

[7 Dying Trees]

Here's a tip I find invaluable: When tuning up, always overtune each string, decreasing the margin by which you overtune with each time you go round. Basically here's why:

If you overtune, you are precompensating for the other strings flattening the string as you tune them up.

The overcompensating turn is about 1-2 turns to begin with, then down to a quarter - one eight when you get closer to everything being in pitch. Depends were all the strings are to start with, once you've seen it in action you'll get a feel for it.

Why? Well:
a)I hate restringing, so I want it to be over quickly
b)I hate tuning a lot more than restringing, so the less time it takes to get everything vaguely in pitch the better.