Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Guitar Magazine

    HOW TO MAKE OLD GUITARS PLAY AND STAY IN TUNE

    Apr 03, 2020 7 minutes
    WORDS & PHOTOGRAPHY HUW PRICE

    It may be helpful in a creative context, but friction is your enemy when it comes to keeping your guitars in tune. The vast majority of tuning issues are caused by friction at the nut. Strings cannot move freely through poorly cut or badly worn nut slots, which is why locking-vibrato designs such as the Floyd Rose dispensed with conventional nuts altogether.

    Nut work is tricky. It requires specialist tools and is generally best left to experienced guitar techs. But friction can be an issue in other areas, too. Here, I’ll be addressing tuner and vibrato servicing. Practically everything here can be carried out by any competent amateur tech with a bit of DIY experience, and avoiding unnecessary hardware replacement will save you a lot of money in the long run.

    Over time guitar tuners can stiffen up, get sloppy and loose or, occasionally, even seize up completely. Replacing worn Klusons with Grovers and Schallers was in the past common practice on old guitars but, in my experience, old tuners can usually be made operational again and will tune up more accurately and hold tune better than before.

    This is true for most old machineheads,

    You’re reading a preview, subscribe to read more.

    More from Guitar Magazine

    Guitar Magazine5 min read
    GIBSON GENERATION COLLECTION G-200 EC & G-WRITER EC
    It’s always the way, isn’t it? You wait 120 years for Gibson to make an acoustic guitar with a shoulder-mounted soundhole and then four come along at once. Last time around, we explored two of these new models, the fully acoustic G-00 and G-45. Here,
    Guitar Magazine7 min read
    Shop Talk: Colleen Fazio
    As we find ourselves thrust deep into the digital era, one hoary old amp dog after another has opined that we’ll likely lose our understanding of analogue circuits entirely if the knowledge isn’t handed down to the next generation. One problem though
    Guitar Magazine5 min read
    Trent Model 1
    Straight out of the box, this guitar smells different. But you get used to it. And besides that, there isn’t much to dislike about the Trent Model 1, a stylish, surprisingly affordable solidbody crafted in a one-person workshop on the south coast of

    Related