You get it down to a fast drill after practice. Mine runs like this:

1. Slacken all the strings enough to pull the pegs.
2. Pull all the pegs and loop the bottoms of the old set together.
3. With a pair of thin-nose pliers lift the loop off the winding post of the old strings one at a time and pull them off the posts.
4. Dispose of old strings.
5. ANchor low E with peg.
6. Thread through post hole and lead under itself, reasonably firmly.
7. While holding the lead down with one hand, crank the tuning key withthe other until it is tight enough to sound a note somewhere reasonably within the range of low E (don't bother with tuning it beyond that until later).
8. Snip the excess off the low E top lead.
9. Repeat for A, D, G, B and high E strings.
10. Tune the guitar.
11. Repeat 10 after a while as the strings settle in.
12. Repeat 11 as needed until stable.

Playing only occasionally I change strings every six months on my primary guitar, less often on the ones I don't use as much.

Hope this helps,



A