Staggered Tuners

[guitician]

I have a Strat neck that I made and I was thinking of not using the string trees. Are staggered tuners useful for keeping enough break angle behind the nut for adequate pressure? Iv'e seen some that only drop the post by a couple of millimeters, and that's no good for what I need. I've noticed Sperzel tuners drop a total of .375". I haven't had any experience with that brand of tuners though.

[dmartn149]

I have a set of guitar fetish's locking, staggered (graduated) tuners on my strat, (no trees) and they work great. They were cheap too.

[guitician]

Have you used Schaller M6 Mini's? How would they compare? I'm looking at Hipshot brand, which I think is made by Schaller, and the posts are 21.4mm to 17mm.

[dmartn149]

The Guitar fetish tuners range in height from about 1/4" to just under 3/8" from the face of the peg head to the string hole. The only other graduated tuners that I have used are the vintage style graduated tuners that came stock on my Charvel. They work pretty good too, but don't lock. I suspect that as long as your neck is similar to a Fender neck that any graduated tuners would allow you to skip the trees.

[guitician]

Thanks, the neck is "Strat Style", but it is of my own design. I really like to have complete control of how it is setup and I'm checking every possible option before I go ahead with a purchase. The nut on it is more like a Les Paul's, so that break angle needs to be just right for optimum friction.

[guitician]

I emailed hipshot and they gave me a spec of 20mm, 19mm and 18mm for the E&A, D&G and B&E string post heights. And your 1/4" over six posts gives about 1mm between each post which gives 6.35mm overall. That's more like I would want, a 2mm change seems like too little.

[dmartn149]

I think you misunderstood me. I meant that the hole for the high E is 1/4" off the face of the peg head, and the hole for the low E is 3/8" off the peg head. So the total difference is only 1/8" It doesn't sound like it would be enough, but it sure works.