does it really mater on a cbg?
some you can tell are rubbish,the ones I took off the acoustic were a bit flimsy.
I bought some of these and used on my tin tin/acoustic build ,seems ok and much better than the flimsy ones.do they go out of tune.
the reason why I ask is that I tune my cbg before the hols and when I came back they were slightly out of tune.
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The only time I have had any issues with a machine head staying in tune is when I put them in BACKWARDS... Yes, they call me wrong-way for a reason... The gears should be on the bridge side of the tuner... but you probably knew that...
John..is this some sort of elaborate joke..along the lines of "well, it was in tune when it left the factory"?? Guitars need the tuning checking everytime you pick them up...don't expect to come back to a guitar after a few days and find it still to be in tune. Small daily changes in temperature and humidity will cause everything to move a tiny bit, and strings do loose their elasticity a little over time. By the way, those machineheads are fine, and they are NOT classical style (classical tuners have bone or plastic rollers), they are simple drilled so that you can use them in either a conventional "paddle" headstock or a slotted headstock...descriptions of stuff from Chinese suppliers is often a little wayward..hence the "classic" description.
thanks for the replies. I though humidity might have some thing to do with it.
I keep my cbg's in my back bedroom which is my office.
during the day when sunny the room get rather warm and cold at night till the heating is put on.
the cbg's don't go out of tune a lot just a little tweek etc maybe a quarter turn or so then its fine.
they look well made and slowpaw use's them as well.
as for the holes they are drilled with no slackness in fitting the tuners.
a nice snug fit.
as it happens I'm going to buy some skull tuners/knobs off Gitty soon for my new olive wood project.
the small olive wood I'm going to cut down the middle and glue them onto the neck.
I'm considering using a couple of dowels on either side to give it strength.
the glue I use is tightbond whether that will be strong enough without dowels?? but I'm not going to take chances as this is for my son.he doesn't know and wont till Xmas.he can play 6 strings but he comes here he grab my cbg and play.
as for Bass I've bought proper Bass Tuners ..cost a bit!! but its only one off. thanks.john
If you have a doweling jig to keep things lined up in won't hurt to add a couple of dowels to each side.
I'm going to have to disagree with Wayfinder on this one. These are no more likely to strip out with steel strings than any other open gear tuner of comparable price point.
Generally if one strips out a tuner it's operator error. Trying to tune a heavy gauge string to an excessively high a pitch is the usual culprit. I've had one defective tuner of any type since I started playing and I'm not that lucky.
I scavenge these type of tuners off of inexpensive electric guitars found at yard sales and thrift stores whenever I can. There are a couple of builds in my photos that use this type of tuner.
The main reason I keep an eye out for them is because you can use these with a thicker headstock. Standard tuners require from 1/2 to 5/8" headstock thickness, the one linked to can be used with 3/4" making construction simpler.
Another benefit is that you can install horizontally in a slotted neck or vertically through the headstock, whichever style suits the build.
As far as your guitar going out of tune it is unlikely the tuners are at fault, an environmental factor is more likely. Tune the instrument and store it away from sunlit windows and air vents. After the settling in period it should hold tune properly with whatever type of tuners are used. If it still goes out of tune examine the construction of the instrument to determine what is moving.
yeah me too. as far as I'm concerned the most common cause of tuning problems is bad drilling. If your holes aren't perfectly perpendicular you can definitely strip gears, but a half decent drill press and nice square stock and you should be golden.
I have had exactly one dud tuner from CBGitty's budget (trapezoidal chassis) ones. But I must've bought at least 500 of em in the last 5 years, probably quite a few more than that.
You could probably expect that failure rate (0.2%?) from $90 Schallers or Grovers just the same.
I also really like recycling rusty old ones.
drill carefully, make sure its just the right bit (not too big) and that the hole is nice and square and problems will be very rare, certainly not common enough to be spending big on brand name tuners :)