Tuners

Part of my touring strategy requires that I pop off the neck of my purchased-for-this-purpose-only Fender Jazz Tele every time I fly on an airline that doesn't allow guitars as free carryons.

But since I hide the Tele body in my carryon suitcase and sneak on the Jazzmaster neck in a padded tripod bag as my "one personal item," I have to remove the strings from the tuners before I travel and reconnect them sometime before the gig. That's time consuming and not great for tuning stability.

The answer is locking tuners. Unlock the tuners and slip out the strings to travel. Slip the strings back in and lock up to gig. Plus no turns on posts equals stable tuning.

Here's the problem, my pseudo-vintage Jazz Tele has 8.8mm vintage-size tuner holes. (And isn't that weird, marketing a "Parallel Universe" FrankenFender with vintage specs.) But most locking tuners fit 10mm holes. I won't enlarge the holes because want to leave this abomination as stock as possible to make it easier sell when the inevitable day arrives.

Fortunately Gotoh makes two kinds of locking tuners that fit into 8.8mm holes and even look almost exactly like the original lousy tuners they replace.

One style has knobs on the back that you turn to lock or unlock the strings.

Dope that I am, I ordered the other style. These "autolocking" tuners have a clever mechanism in the post itself. Unscrew it a little, insert the string, and turn and turn and turn and turn and turn until the string locks in place. To remove the string, the instructions say to use a coin (they must have tiny coins in Japan) to loosen the post, and then turn and turn and turn and turn and turn until the string unlocks.

Changing strings with these elegant locking tuners takes even longer than changing strings on regular tuners. I've listed them on eBay.

But for my two not-take-apart electric guitars, these tuners are swell. I've installed sets on both.