anyone know how to restring a mandolin??

Every Kentucky mandolin I've ever seen had a Gibson-style tailpiece. It just slides off backward, revealing the place to attach the looped ends of the strings. Winding the other ends onto the tuning strings is fairly simple, but hard to describe in words. See this link for instructions and a diagram:

http://www.frets.com/fretspages/Musician/Mandolin/...

Don't take all the strings off, or you will have to re-position the bridge to get the right intonation.

Restringing A Mandolin

Changing Mandolin Strings

Yeah. The tail piece should just slide off. Taking off the screws that you're referring will remove the tailpiece completely, which won't help you, unless you decide someday to replace the tailpiece with a Montelone, or more expensive Gibson-style tailpiece.

Once you have the cover off, just change the strings one at a time. Don't worry about the hooks at this point, just thread the string through the tuning machine, and wrap it around the post a couple of times. Keep plenty of tension on it, and wind it up. When the end loop becomes paralell with its designated hook, simply loop it around, and continue winding until the string is in tune.

Repeat 7 times :)

1) Yes 2) It doesn't matter what strings you buy, if you cannot restring your bass (or set up the action) yourself, your understanding of music is so rudimentary that you will never be a good enough player for the strings, what kind of guitar it is, what amp you use, or what music you are trying to play to make ANY difference in how bad you must sound... (Sorry. But them's the facts.....)

Well, on my mandolin, there is a metal peice with and the peice covers the strings. The metal just pops right off and when you are done changing the strings, you push it back on.

There should be a small screw on the tailpiece. Remove it (or them depending on the instument) and then the tailpiece should actually slide (can be stiff, it's on little metal guides) towards the butt.

That will give open access to the string comb.

no