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Locking Tuner Question

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  • Locking Tuner Question

    Hey guys & gals, gotta question for anyone who may know. Backstory will follow the question.

    Should the pin/rod of a guitar tuning lock (the piece which screws into the tuning peg through the rear of the tuning machine at the head of the guitar) be milled smooth or is there usually a channel or slot at the end where the string would rest?

    The reason for my inquiry is because I had a string, the 'B' string specifically, on my guitar break & the culprit was the locking tuner rod. It happened when I went to unscrew the locking rod so I could make a micro adjustment to my tuning, because I'm evidently trying to sabotage myself. The string just went slack & didn't snap like it would when the string breaks at the peg. I unscrewed the locking rod & used a loupe at 30X magnification to closely inspect it. There was, & still is, a bit of the string caught in what appears to be a burr at the end of the rod. I unscrewed 4 more of the locks out individually, so as not to get them mixed up, and noticed that they didn't appear to have a channel for the string. The rods do appear to taper at the end ever so slightly, probably to reduce snagging on the string.

    I would guess that it might just be a manufacturing defect, a burr that wasn't smoothed & must have slipped past QC or something. No big deal. I can remove the burr on the rod easily with a stone from my Spyderco Sharpmaker.
    Just wondered if anyone here might know before I shoot an email to Schecter Guitars' customer service or tech support & get an answer that they don't know & that they purchase their locking machines from a vendor in bulk or something.

    I don't want to not have the locking rod in place for two reasons: First & foremost being that I don't like the idea of having a machine tuning gear exposed by having the lock out & secondly, I actually find them useful & have had no issues with them in the past, though granted I only have the one guitar equipped with locking tuners.

    On a side note, the strings hadn't been wrapped half to once around the peg as I had requested at the time of setup. Don't know if that would make a difference, or if the tech at Guitar Center noticed anything odd, but he likely didn't bother to check anyway. My usual guy at my local guitar shop was not available & wouldn't be for three weeks, so I had to take it to GC (where they DON'T treat it like it's their own) & this latest screw-up has convinced me that I should learn how to do a full set-up myself on an old guitar, for the next time my local dude is unavailable or backed up for weeks. GC's "Tech" didn't even do the intonation of my damn guitar properly/to my request. I liked the action where it was & he dropped it low. Yes, I had thicker strings installed, which requires intonation, I get that. However, there should be a way to figure how much to adjust the Tune-O-Matic bridge accordingly, right? Take a measurement of the stock bridge height & note the stock string gauge, tune to standard tuning, ensure it's buzz free, tune to customer's spec ("Drop C" or C-G-C-F-A-D low to high) adjust it from there to fine-tune any buzz out, I would think. That's what I brought in: a factory untouched & unadjusted guitar with the stock Ernie Ball .10-.46 strings still installed & in standard tuning. There may be more to it than that, but come on. Never again, Guitar Center.

    Thanks & sorry for the mini-rant.
    Side-Side note: the advice on pickup height I found on these forums did help me to dial in & get the sound I was looking for out of the Blackout AHB-1's in the Schecter SLS Blackjack C-1 A guitar referenced in this post. Double Thanks for that!

  • #2
    Re: Locking Tuner Question

    theres no channel on any locking tuner that ive seen, its just a rounded over rod

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    • #3
      Re: Locking Tuner Question

      Welcome to the forum!!


      Yeah, I've never seen a channel either...it was always smooth. Sometimes I wrap once around, but mostly not. My thought is that it is just a defect in the tuner. If you can see it, try to fix it, otherwise contact the company- you shouldn't be breaking strings there.
      Administrator of the SDUGF

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      • #4
        Re: Locking Tuner Question

        Yeah, just smooth it off.

        And DON'T take your guitar to GC for anything that would require greater than a monkey's talent to fix.
        Originally Posted by IanBallard
        Rule of thumb... the more pot you have, the better your tone.

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        • #5
          Re: Locking Tuner Question

          Alright, thanks guys. It was my assumption that the rod should be smooth with the end rounded so that nothing would bind up & cause string breakage. That would be logical anyway.

          I will mark this as closed and double check that I should be getting notifications on my thread posts. Notifications don't happen for me on the Kubuntu Forum either, which is dumb. Anyway, thanks again.

          Oh, and Doc I am already well aware that I should NEVER use the Guitar Center "Garage" for anything but the usual luthier I take it to suspended regular set-ups for a short period because there was something like a three week backlog of instrument/amp repairs he had to catch up on. Dude had come back from a well-deserved vacation during the time that they normally don't get repairs. That and a recent switch to using a digital ticketing system caused work orders to pile up because the guy doing the repairs was still using the "analog" format, so to speak. Funny as hell, when you think about it: the dude who handles the front of the business kept wondering why there were paper tickets showing up but just thought the repair guy was using them out of habit, but he'd forgot that they went digital (because that switch was implemented at the beginning of the week the repair guy went on his two-week vacation) so when he came back he defaulted back to the paper method...

          So, the dude at GC was my only option, really. I had called ahead to lay out exactly what I needed, had written it down on a piece of paper that was with the set of strings to be installed AND went over it with him when he physically inspected the guitar when I brought it in & did understand what I wanted or I thought he did. I should have just said "**** it" when I heard the tech tell a customer who'd been playing for less than a year that that he might need actually need a full neck refrett after being asked about cleaning the guitar neck on the used 7-String guitar that he had & how much it would cost to have the neck cleaned if he were to bring it in for set-up. Instead, I just told the new guitar player which products to use & that I had done a complete neck & fingerboard deep cleaning, conditioning & even polished the frets on a guitar the week before & that it cost me $15-20 & a couple of hours labor and didn't require a $200 unnecessary upsell when he brought it in to do a standard set-up & string installation.
          Better yet, he was not the same ****wit that neglected to inform me until after I had paid for set-up & intonation on a Floyd Rose equipped guitar that he had ended up twisting/warping the neck of that guitar a "slight amount at the first or second fret, that you won't even notice but you might feel" & weasel out of it by saying that it happens when the guitar is exposed to moisture & that had caused it to come out of adjustment. BULL****! I live in goddamn ARIZONA! My guitar was kept in a case, nowhere ****ing NEAR an Air Conditioning unit & out of sunlight & heat also. It was actually in the most temperature stable room, instide a case & there was NO indication of ANYTHING being off, even the slightest! No, that dude actually had been long-since fired. It was the fact my wife had been with me that saved him from a severe ass beating. Instead, I took it to the store manager after bringing it to the attention of a friend of mine that works at that Guitar Center. So I thought it would be safe to have a basic intonation & set-up done on a guitar equipped with a Tone-Pros Tune-O-Matic bridge on a set of strings I was bringing in (Dunlop Heavy Core 10-46, drop tuned to 'Drop C'). Nothing was ****ed up, this time, though. And this rant should probably go into the "GC Nightmares" thread that I know exists.

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