5 common mistakes when tuning a guitar

Don’t worry, at Musicopolix we aim to teach you how to do it in the best possible way. After reading this post you will stop falling into the five common mistakes. Before starting it would be good if you had a tuner nearby, are you ready? Grab your guitar and read!

1. One of the most common mistakes is to tune the guitar with a different posture with which it will be played later. When it comes to tuning the guitar, the posture with which you place it is very important, it is not the same to tune it lying down as it is on its side, gravity influences the process. The ideal is that you tune it with the same posture with which you are going to play it later.
2. Another very common problem is not putting the capo when tuning it. If you normally use the capo when playing, it is important that when you tune the capo you do so with it on.
3. The third mistake is for beginners. Those who are starting often make a mistake when placing the strings. Sometimes we get lost and when we are changing the strings, we put one in the position of another and… surprise when tuning!
4. Another common mistake is to tighten the tuning peg too much and crac! break the string. Do not tighten as if there were no tomorrow, they will not escape
5. When we finish tuning we forget to compare the sixth and first strings. The two should give the same note, an E, although with two octaves difference. When comparing them we will see the small errors that we have been accumulating during the process of tuning string by string.

Now you are ready to face this task, you will no longer have to ask anyone to tune your guitar. In case you have any doubts, here is a video where our colleague Adrián shows you how to tune it in a compensated way so that the tension of the neck is distributed in a balanced way.

Written by Michael Adams