Guitar Gear Forum

Irritates me… And I know it shouldn’t. Why should I care??

But so many people fucking have locking tuners and wrap their damn string around the posts like some moron. Sorry if that’s you. But your completely negating the design and effectiveness…!

Mini rant over

Yeah that's really stupid

Begs the question on what is worse: having locking tuners and wrapping the strings or having locking tuners and not clipping the strings?

I have them loose, lock it, then tune. Am I a retard?? Serious question

LOLOL

This is 100% the entire reason I have locking tuners on every guitar. I hate wrapping strings.

Holy-diver wrote:I have them loose, lock it, then tune. Am I a retard?? Serious question

Sounds like it’s a possibility! Hahah. But you should pull the string thru fairly tight and lock it. This way you have a half turn to pitch which is the closest you can get to having no slack in the string which is what locking tuners help eliminate. Also most locking tuners, like Sperzels, don’t even have much post to wrap it on. So not only is it incorrect but now that string is “wrapped” on the post all sloppy and will probably slip more than a regular tuner with 3 wraps!

EndTime wrote:Irritates me… And I know it shouldn’t. Why should I care??

But so many people fucking have locking tuners and wrap their damn string around the posts like some moron. Sorry if that’s you. But your completely negating the design and effectiveness…!

Mini rant over

I saw an interview with Eric Johnson and he mentioned this particular irregularity on the Wylde custom guitar he got to play when Zakk came through Austin. Snippet from the article:

The conversation went like this
Eric: *Pointing to the headstock* "Zakk, what's the meaning of this?"
Zakk: "What a locking nut? What are you gonna do, pop a string when you pull on the bar? What kinda bars you visit?"
Eric: *laughs* "No, you have a locking nut and Grover locking tuners."
Zakk: "Oh that, YEAH! It's a tension thing I'm working on!"

At this point Eric (Johnson) felt Zakk (Wylde) tapped onto something and decided to investigate.
"So I first started with unlocked tuners and a locked nut. Felt that after a little bit and then decided on locked tuners on an unlocked nut."
After the many variations on a theme Eric came to this conclusion "I love the tension of Fender Strats and have for many many years.
Zakk has showed me that if you can have the nut locked first, then lock the tuners, then you'll have the most comfortable tension on your guitar," Eric
said with much chagrin and modesty. Later in the interview Eric moved on from string tension to a blueberry muffin recipe his mom taught him.

Wanna hear something even more ridiculous?

I’m sure your probably familiar with the current PRS locking tuners style where the screws are kn the top. When my Vela arrived from reverb the strings were wrapped….. in between the top of the tuner and the top screw…

I'm a Boomer so, all but one of my guitars have regular tuners.
I always forget that my 2013 SG has locking tuners so, the strings are wrapped and I don't lock them!
Next time I restring it, Ima gunna pull them tight and lock em down real proper!!!

spawnofthesith wrote:Wanna hear something even more ridiculous?

I’m sure your probably familiar with the current PRS locking tuners style where the screws are kn the top. When my Vela arrived from reverb the strings were wrapped….. in between the top of the tuner and the top screw…

I see these ALL the time and was the one on the bench when I wrote this. lol.

I guess those are kinda oddballs in that the posts can actually handle the wraps, but when I get a guitar with Sperzels and all these crazy wraps trying to fit it on the tuner, I really Have to question if this person at LEAST paused for a second and is like, that looks fucked up… That can’t be right! Haha. At least have some curious common sense. Lol

I wish there was a law where the tech was allowed to confiscate the guitar after a certain level of stupidity was observed lol

You know like when the impound your car for parking in front of the fire truck exit etc

EndTime wrote:

Holy-diver wrote:I have them loose, lock it, then tune. Am I a retard?? Serious question

Sounds like it’s a possibility! Hahah. But you should pull the string thru fairly tight and lock it. This way you have a half turn to pitch which is the closest you can get to having no slack in the string which is what locking tuners help eliminate. Also most locking tuners, like Sperzels, don’t even have much post to wrap it on. So not only is it incorrect but now that string is “wrapped” on the post all sloppy and will probably slip more than a regular tuner with 3 wraps!

So only mildly, got it lol

GuitarBilly wrote:I wish there was a law where the tech was allowed to confiscate the guitar after a certain level of stupidity was observed lol

You know like when the impound your car for parking in front of the fire truck exit etc

I have honestly thought this. Lol. Now we know there are dudes who just have money and buy the nicest gear. One dude brought in 3 guitar literally worth 20k. They were great guitars, and I set them up immaculate. I mean I always do! Hah, but these were already great and just to tweak it all perfect was within reach…

What do I hear out front, some god awful out of tune playing… I step out to look, cause I’m like “That better not be THAT guy, cause the owner just grabbed those 3 guitars to bring back up front… And sure enough…

Owner tells me after he has another dozen or so primo guitars and he can’t play a fucking lick..,, I wanted to at least take one away from him. Lol

EndTime wrote:

GuitarBilly wrote:I wish there was a law where the tech was allowed to confiscate the guitar after a certain level of stupidity was observed lol

You know like when the impound your car for parking in front of the fire truck exit etc

I have honestly thought this. Lol. Now we know there are dudes who just have money and buy the nicest gear. One dude brought in 3 guitar literally worth 20k. They were great guitars, and I set them up immaculate. I mean I always do! Hah, but these were already great and just to tweak it all perfect was within reach…

What do I hear out front, some god awful out of tune playing… I step out to look, cause I’m like “That better not be THAT guy, cause the owner just grabbed those 3 guitars to bring back up front… And sure enough…

Owner tells me after he has another dozen or so primo guitars and he can’t play a fucking lick..,, I wanted to at least take one away from him. Lol

People like this blow my mind lol

EndTime wrote:

GuitarBilly wrote:I wish there was a law where the tech was allowed to confiscate the guitar after a certain level of stupidity was observed lol

You know like when the impound your car for parking in front of the fire truck exit etc

I have honestly thought this. Lol. Now we know there are dudes who just have money and buy the nicest gear. One dude brought in 3 guitar literally worth 20k. They were great guitars, and I set them up immaculate. I mean I always do! Hah, but these were already great and just to tweak it all perfect was within reach…

What do I hear out front, some god awful out of tune playing… I step out to look, cause I’m like “That better not be THAT guy, cause the owner just grabbed those 3 guitars to bring back up front… And sure enough…

Owner tells me after he has another dozen or so primo guitars and he can’t play a fucking lick..,, I wanted to at least take one away from him. Lol

So you're teching for TGP?

GuitarBilly wrote:

EndTime wrote:

GuitarBilly wrote:I wish there was a law where the tech was allowed to confiscate the guitar after a certain level of stupidity was observed lol

You know like when the impound your car for parking in front of the fire truck exit etc

I have honestly thought this. Lol. Now we know there are dudes who just have money and buy the nicest gear. One dude brought in 3 guitar literally worth 20k. They were great guitars, and I set them up immaculate. I mean I always do! Hah, but these were already great and just to tweak it all perfect was within reach…

What do I hear out front, some god awful out of tune playing… I step out to look, cause I’m like “That better not be THAT guy, cause the owner just grabbed those 3 guitars to bring back up front… And sure enough…

Owner tells me after he has another dozen or so primo guitars and he can’t play a fucking lick..,, I wanted to at least take one away from him. Lol

So you're teching for TGP?

Haha I’m sure there are some.

It’s a pretty varied customer base, on the serious note. This was early on, now when I see ee pristine guitars, I know they aren’t being played by anyone who ACTUALLY plays. The REAL players bring in these nasty sweat covered, caked in dirt, type guitars. Frets pitted, OBVIOUS wear, of course. It’s good and bad, this job isn’t rocket science, so I like challenges where there is some actual skills involved, whether it be repairs or routing, or just a good guitar that needs some serious set up to be great again. But I don’t like cleaning off peoples sweat and gunk. Lol.

What’s funny is some of these look BAD under the lights we have there. Whenever I bring in my guitars to work on, they honestly are In the top 10% of dirty, dusty and nasty. Lol. Once I get those under the lights I realized IM THAT guy haha

Yeah there's a say " if you want a good used guitar, find one that actually looks used, the mint ones are the ones never get played"

My guitars are all beat-up. I don't do it deliberately, but it you use them, it's inevitable.

I had a first year Music Man Silhouette Special (95?) back in high school. Loved the guitar, hated the tuners. They were locking Grovers and were weird. They had a top lock screw that screwed into the tuning key shaft (hehehehe I said shaft) but the shaft had no pass through hole for the strings. Instead you had to pinch the string between the screw head and the shaft. It was the dumbest design ever and I wish I would have changed those out for something better. Because I liked that guitar a lot otherwise. It’s long gone now but if I had the chance I’d grab it.

It also had a Wilkinson trem but not the two point floating. It was a six point strat style but with some weird bent steel saddles that were actually comfortable. Similar to what Nobody used on his Strat builds.