<html> <body> John - Your post offers hours of amusement and useful information, but 1) he could practice his knots on a plain piece of wire, for hours, and 2) he wanted practice in replacing strings, not knot replacing them.  I hope he meant plain wire strings, as otherwise it might start getting expensive.  I don't see why he wouldn't just let down the tension, remove the beckets from tuning pin holes, snip off coils, if necessary, and remove string. (he could save the string to practice knots, or not.) I am most curious about these instructions that were purportedly previously posted to the list.  David Skolnik Hastings on Hudson,  NY At 02:56 PM 7/22/2008, you wrote: <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">I'd practice splicing it first.  To do that, you want it to break at the tuning pin.  Just keep turning it until it breaks.  It can be a fourth or fifth high before it breaks.  Or you could do it the boring way ... with a becket breaker, or nip it with a pliers. After splicing in the non-speaking length, cut off your splice.  Then practice splicing in the speaking length (assuming it's a bass string).  You will need to remove some of the copper winding to do this. You could even practice splicing it on the hitch pin end.  You'll have to make a loop, then splice it on the remaining wire.  Should keep you busy for several minutes. <G> Oh ... remember to use a dummy pin to make your coils.  And to back out your original tuning pin 1 1/2 turns (instead of 3 1/2). -- JF </blockquote> <blockquote type=cite class=cite cite="">On Tue, Jul 22, 2008 at 12:22 PM, Matthew Todd <<a href="mailto:toddpianoworks@att.net">toddpianoworks@att.net</a> > wrote: <dl> <dd>I will be practicing string replacement on my Yamaha U-1.  But first, I need a string to replace. <dd>  <dd>What is the proper procedure for breaking a string?  I think this was posted on the list not too long ago, but I can't find it. <dd>  </dl></blockquote></body> </html>