Coarse tuners part 4

Since everything - restringing, tuning and playing - worked fine with the latest version of the coarse tuners, I decided (as mentioned in this post) to keep this layout and cut off the remaining headstock. The shape it has now might be altered slightly - I'm not quite sure about that. I have to paint the headstock black where I've cut and sanded it, but apart from that, I am just going to play it for some time and not alter anything (or not much, at least).

It's a real pleasure to play without the head. Much more compact and manageable.

The P90 neck pickup is just for testing. I'll put the other humbucker back in soon.

Coarse tuners part 3

As mentioned in this post, I am trying to make a set of coarse tuners, compact and light, for use with my fine tuning bridge, allowing me to ditch the headstock. The first version used T-nuts, but this time, I made a brass plate with threaded holes to hold the tuning pegs. I have also managed to lower my failure rate in drilling holes in the tuner pegs (which are blind screws). Now I am down to around one broken drill bit per finished peg. And I've made twelve of them, six short ones and six long ones. Progress!

It's all mounted on the guitar I use for experiments. And it works. It works well, actually. Stringing up - especially getting and keeping a correct length of the string ends through the peg holes - is a bit troublesome, but I believe that once I've done it a couple of times, it'll be almost as easy as with a traditional set of tuners. The coarse tuning itself is easy. The tuners are sufficiently precise, and the fine tuners of the bridge do the more delicate tuning.

Once I've used the system long enough to believe that it works in the long run as well, I'll cut off the excess headstock and shape the remaining part - plus the brass plate itself - in a more elegant way. I will also tidy up the recessed holes for the allen nuts on the back of the headstock - those are the nuts that fix the peg when the correct note is reached. Plus, I will also buy get some prettier nuts. The ones I used are modified from those that you use for assembling IKEA furniture (Zachary isn't the only one building IKEA guitars ;-) The allen nut on the far left in the picture is for mounting bicycle brakes and I am going to get some more of these.

I also intend to recess the screws that hold the brass plate to the headstock and perhaps some time in the future, I will do a galvanic etching on the brass plate. It seems that I'm not even half way with this small project yet. Meaning that lots of fun remains.

Coarse Tuners part 2

As described in an earlier post, I've tried to make a compact set of coarse tuners to go with the fine tuners on my Schaller 456 fine tuning bridge, so I could reduce the headstock and loose the big and heavy traditional tuners. The earlier attempt in the form of a locking nut wasn't succesful, but now I think I'm on to something.

I've installed my own coarse tuners, each consisting of a blind screw, a T-nut and an allen nut (a.k.a. an internal wrenching nut). In the blind screw, a hole is drilled for the string to go through, just like the peg of an ordinary tuner.

To tune up the guitar, you turn the blind screw clockwise with an allen key until you reach the approximate tone. Then you fasten it by tightening the allen nut on the back of the headstock. The rest of the tuning is done with the fine tuner at the bridge.

One of the beautiful things about it is that when you tighten or loosen the string by turning the set screw, the height of the string over the fingerborad stays the same, since it rests in the screw's thread. And the pull of the string tightens the allen nut against the T-nut, securing the string even more.

The best thing about it is, it seems to work perfectly. And it's much smaller and lighter than ordinary tuners, so it's a good solution if you want to build a headless guitar - or convert an existing guitar to one. You'll have to leave a little bit of headstock for the T-nuts, but that's not much. And you might want it anyway to stop your fretting hand from sliding off the neck.

On my own guitar I've mounted the tuners on the very end of the headstock. The reason is that I'll be using the other sections of the headstock for experimentation with alternatives to the T-nuts. A set of threaded inserts and a brass plate with threaded holes are some of the things I want to try. Next experiment will probably be threaded inserts mounted on the next section of the headstock. And I imagine that when I have reached the last section of the headstock, next to the nut, I'll know which of the solutions I prefer.

Drilling the string holes in the blind screws was a pain. I only got two made before I had dulled or broken my drill bits. I'll have to buy some new ones and do it right. That's the reason why the remaining four strings in the picture go to traditional tuners.

Btw, I imagine that if you add some loctite or similar to increase friction, you might be able to do away with the allen nut. Afaik, there also is a substance called "peg dope". I have to get some and try if the tuner can hold the string without the allen nut.

A locking nut that didn't work

Since I put the T-beam guitar on hold for a while, I bough a cheap Gibson SG copy for various experiments. One of the first things I wanted to try out was a tuning system, which uses a locking nut in combination with a Schaller 456 fine tuning bridge

I need to be able to rough tune and lock down each string separately, so the usual ones with two strings per screw won't do. According to the idea, after rough tuning, the fine tuners in the bridge take care of further adjustments.

For some time, I've been looking for a suitable locking nut. After a while without identifying anything useful off-the-shelves, I decided to make one myself.


I started with a piece of 7075 T6 aluminium. I drilled six holes for the string locking screws and two for screwing the locking nut on the headstock. I then threaded the holes (M4).


I then made six grooves; one for each string.


...and filed the grooves smooth.


I mounted it on a piece of brass on the headstock, but the D string snapped when I tightened the screw. On closer inspection, the screws turned out to have very sharp edges, which explains why the string was cut. I'll have to file the ends of the screws flat. I'll have to shorten them a bit anyway, so that's no big deal.


Unfortunately, there was another problem as well: The pressure of the screws lifted the nut off the brass plate (the picture shows the gap between the aluminium nut and brass plate). That can probably be solved by making the nut a bit deeper and having two mounting screws on each side of the string locking screws rather than only having one set of screws.

I'm going to give it another try some day and make an improved version.

Btw, if it had worked, I would have bought six proper set screws for it and cut off the remaining headstock. In an artistic fashion, of course ;-)