The L’il Nipper

Now here’s a nice little tool for the guitar and other stringed instruments. The L’il Nipper is a convenient stringing tool. It’s small and fits pretty much anywhere.

It includes a string cutter and a pin puller. It fits in the palm of your hand and has an adapter for electric tuners. More important, when winding or unwinding your strings, the movement you make is up and down rather than circular so it puts less stress on your wrist.

The string cutter works by running the string through two separate pieces which you angle together. Then you pull the pieces in two different direction, thus cutting the string. Meaning the blade is not accessible to fingernails or ends of fingers; no cuts!

The L'il Nipper Peg Winder

I’ve been using it a lot and find it more convenient than other tools out there, especially due to the fact that you need a single tool to do everything.

However, it’s important to note that even if the adapter is supposed to work with smaller tuners like on electric guitars, the size is wrong. It’s slightly too small so it doesn’t fit completely over the tuners. I’ve tried it on two different electrics with different machine heads (one with Grover locking tuners) and found the same results. You can still work around this. Taking the adapter away won’t solve anything as the fitting is then too big and will consistently hit the other tuners.

Still, a very convenient tool at only $12.95.