Tuners/machineheads

[Submarine]

I'm building a Frankenstrat and I'm probably going with Schallers for the tuners as they have always worked in the past.  I see a lot of love for the Gotohs on many of the guitar forum sites but nobody articulates why they prefer them.  Any opinions you want to share?

[Jake]

I really like Sperzel locking on my Fenders and Grovers on my Gibsons. What can I say? I run with the pack.

[liquidsmoke]

I had Sperzels on my SG and there always seemed to be slack when tuning but that could have been because of the nut and/or headstock angle. I've been really impressed with the tuners on low end Asian made guitars as of late. If you want to go cheap you might be able to find take offs for next to nothing.

[dogfood]

Gotoh=metric sizes and will probably require small adjustments for American parts.

[Omlet]

I have Hipshot locking tuners on my custom axe and they are pretty good. However, bear in mind that they have open construction.

[jibberish]

lp's have a slack issue with the tuners. both of mine have grovers. I do not like them.

fenders have some lame ass tuners that have a hard time staying in tune. my tele always has to be tuned before playing

locking whammy's stay in tune(duh)

the high ratio tuners on the hagstrom ultra swede and even the POS schecters are excellent and stay in tune.

NOTE, these are all comments on stock tuners on my particular guitars.

[James1214]

Whatever you do, get locking tuners. They are fucking awesome. I'm not a fan of the ones that clip the strings for you, feel like too much could go wrong.

[Omlet]

My hwy1 tele stays in tune but still i think about some locking tuners...

[Pissy]

I like high ratio tuners.  Gigging  with locking tuners is a bit of a pain because the venue is always a different temp/humidity than wherever you last tuned the guitar.  Then it takes longer to tune right before your play the gig.  I haven't found that they keep a guitar in tune any better personally, but they certainly do work well in general. 

High ratio though, you get a lot more control over where the note lands, and the potential to unwind in a phantom sense is less than standard ratio tuners.

[RacerX]

Locking tuners are a gimmick.

[Jake]

How so? They work great for me. Nothing even remotely whacky happening for me, tuning-wise or other.

[RacerX]

Oh, they do what they're supposed to; they're just unnecessary.

Standard tuners work fine—the old-school (from violins & classical guitars) method of wrapping the strings on the pegheads essentially locks the strings once they've been through the initial stretching out. EDIT: See below:

[Jake]

Necessary/Unnecessary

People have been batting that word around me a lot lately as if everyone has reached an objective consensus on just was is/isn't necessary. But I don't remember that happening, thank Satan. What an unrealized world this would be if the standard had been "necessary." Especially in music.

[jibberish]

jake, i'm not messing with you even tho I posted contrary to what you did.

I noticed way back when I first got my cortez black beauty that the G string most noticeably would tune either above or below where I needed it, and would drop flat through a little zone if I tuned right on. I would have to stretch the string to get above the dumb spot.  this was a 70's jap copy and they used gold plated grovers and everything else that Gibson did on their '59 black beauty.

then I got my 2000 LP studio.  BAM, felt right at home with that g string gap too. 
Still, I wont mess with them. I have owned that tuner and its "thing" since like '78. i'm plenty used to it and its quirks. compared to high ratio, I just don't like them as well.

I have ragged on fenders and tuning before. my tele would be worth replacing the tuners on actually.  I need to add coil taps, high ratio tuners and some kind of ashtray bridge/tail cover to really get full use of my blacktop tele. that being said, that is one fast ass and bright guitar. string thru rules. I wish my ultra swede was string thru.

[Jake]

That sound awfully symptomatic of a nut that's not cut right.

[Submarine]

I guess I'll just go with Schallers. 

[Metal and Beer]

In my thirty years of experience* with tuners, I've never had slippage with anything but the shittiest junk gear wheels that come on the 49 dollar department store kidtars; certainly the stock ones Gib and Leo used over the eons have always been just fine. Wind the string proper and let the tension do the rest...

* This does not make my experience "better", I'm just sayin'

[jibberish]

ok, serious question:  my tele has older strings and it plays for the time I am playing it in tune, unless a string is getting ready to break, but that isn't the guitar's fault.
then I put it down for a month and it is out of tune on a couple of strings enough to need to get the tuner out to see where i'm at. the other guitars maybe drift a hair after a while, the LP's being moreso than the rest.  i'm sure subtle temp, humidity on wood and string aging/fatiguing all helps, but you can sense overall which guitar can generally be a safe "grab n go" and which ones are no chance, better check the tuning.

as I said before, I grew up holding a les paul. I wouldn't change a thing on them. I wonder if how I wind or something like that needs that final bump in tension to set all the slack.
jake got me thinking. so I looked.  the nuts are clean and I use 009's so there is room in every slot for larger strings.  I will have to look into how I wind my strings. maybe that is my grover issue.

[jibberish]

* This does not make my experience "better", I'm just sayin'

heh. you don't have to be all PC. no one attacks you out of the blue for stating your opinions.

I, on the other hand, have to be very careful. it could happen at any moment while I am exploring something.

[Metal and Beer]

I ain't "all PC", I'm just not into invalidating others' experiences against my own. Yo' strangs slip, they slip

Telecasters aren't infamous for tuning issues, who knows. Roy Buchanan used his as an ice scraper, maybe his was the Best Tele Ever and yours is the Worst Tele Ever and all other Teles lie between. What model/age is yours? I had a '65 that stayed in tune for years, I had an early 70's Deluxe that stayed in tune for a few minutes.

[The Shocker]

With all the humidity here, my guitars aren't in tune after a week, let alone a month.  Always sharp.

[Metal and Beer]

Just kinda musing about tuners in general....they really, really gotta be shitty to counteract the string tension. Yeah, getting the string to target might be more challenging than w/ better machines, but again once it's there? Sheeeeeeit.

/poverty experiences

[The Shocker]

It's all about the smoothness.