Locking tuners


My daugther's parlour-sized acoustic has really small tuners on it,
probably in the interests of a balanced appearance. The buttons
are so small that she has trouble turning them since they don't
provice much leverage.

I have the same guitar, only folk sized, and tried to find the
same tuners I have to put on her guitar. The closest I found
were Grover rotomatics which have the exact same buttons, but
the tuners are so much more massive than what she has that I
figured that their weight would be a problem.

The solution was to put my tuners, which are quite a bit lighter
than Grovers, on her guitar and buy some new ones for mine. While
I was at it I figured why not get some locking tuners, they're only
a few dollars more.

So yesterday I installed some Grover 106C Locking Rotomatics. These
have an 18:1 turns ratio and an internal cam that locks the string
when you start turning the button. They look like regular tuners
on the outside except that the shaft with the hole in it is just a
bit longer that usual and has a slot in the end. They do have a
screw on the back to prevent them from turning which my tuners
didn't have so I had to drill some holes, but that was easy enough.

These things are fantastic. When installing a string you just
thread it through the hole, pull tight, and start turning. After a
quarter turn or so of the shaft the string is locked and just a bit
more and it's tuned. You end up with about a half turn of wire on
the shaft. I cut the string just long enough to be able to bend the
end down to avoid getting stabbed by it.

After an hour of blues licks full of heavy bends and another hour of
chords and such the strings are still solidly in place.

I saw that Sam Ash sells them for 40 $US though they were out of
stock. I ended up paying 50 $US. A bit much I guess if you're
buying them just to make string changing easier but if you can
find some other excuse I can highly recommend them.

Paul
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