Honestly, I've been asking myself this question for a long time.

Why would anybody want to have those modern standard tuners, where you have the pointy string ends poking out????

Why were they invented in the first place??? Cost cutting purposes??

I hate those things and think about replacing the few I have with Kluson Vintage tuners.

Well, I have an American Deluxe with locking tuners now and hardly any experience with them, but I can already say that I don't like them for the same reason!

Either you have those needle-like string ends poking out or you have those absurd tingle-tangle-rolled-string ends dingeling around on your neck!

Opposite to that, you have those nice slotted tuner heads on the vintage tuners. Stick in the string and the pointy-pokey-ends are GONE!
OK, you gotta cut the strings off to get the proper length, but show me ONE guitarist who doesn't have a pair of small combi-plyers (grip, squeeze and clip off) in his case anyway??????
Especially when you play Floyd Rose systems as well.

I herewith PROMISE, that I will NEVER buy a Fender guitar again if it doesn't have VINTAGE TUNERS!!!
What did you guys from Fender THINK, when you invented/took over those standard crap tuners???

Sorry 'bout the rant-like post, I don't mean to be rude, but these standard tuners have been annoying me since I had my first experience with vintage tuners on my MiJ Iron Maiden Signature strat in the 90s.

Hey, dear Fender team, wake up! Almost EVERY guitarist SCREAMS "VINTAGE", so put those vintage tuners on EVERY strat which has standards right now. They're timeless and look good on both, relic and new strats!

Even though I don't like the locking tuners either .... I see the point of tuning stability.
With a little effort you can lock the strings AFTER(!) cutting them off, so that the end will not poke out of the tuner head.

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Kindest regards from Germany, Dee
My recordings --> http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_mu ... dID=564337
STRATS ROCK!!! but Teles and Firebirds, too!

I've never had a problem with the "pointy ends". They have their territory...I have mine. We respect each other.

Quit messin' with 'em.

yep....

If the half a millimetre string ends pointing out are the biggest thing in your life to worry about, you must have it pretty easy

It's not even something I've ever thought of. If you cut it close enough they hardly poke out at all.

A solution to a problem that doesn't exist. Great.

Cheers

David

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"Humans think they are smarter than dolphins because we build cars and buildings and start wars etc...and all that dolphins do is swim in the water, eat fish and play around. Dolphins believe that they are smarter for exactly the same reasons."

Well, I wouldn't say I'm "messing" with them.
It starts with cleaning the headstock (yes, my name's not Gallagher, my strats frequently see cloth and polish ), there's always cloth remains left and it ends with accidentally stinging somebody's arm when playing together. They tear and wear the inside of cases and gig bags.
If you roll them to a ring, they don't poke anymore but your guitar sounds like Santa Claus' reindeer sled with jingleing bells and it looks stupid (bubble perm hairstyle anyone?? Or afro-look?).

Next time I'll braid them together, dread locks are hipper nowadays!

All statements are IMHO and taken from my experience with these tuners.

If some of you don't mind the disadvantages, fine, I just feel kinda annoyed with standard tuners.

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Kindest regards from Germany, Dee
My recordings --> http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_mu ... dID=564337
STRATS ROCK!!! but Teles and Firebirds, too!

Dunno what kind of locking tuners you have but the ones on my Deluxe are just like I described. A horizontal hole in the shaft where you lead the strings through, lock with the wheel in the back and cut off the strings at the pole, resulting in a string end poking out.

So yes, my solution helps an EXISTING problem. Cut, retreat a little, lock, tune!

_________________
Kindest regards from Germany, Dee
My recordings --> http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_mu ... dID=564337
STRATS ROCK!!! but Teles and Firebirds, too!

As long as the tuner faithfully does its job, it doesn't bother me one way or the other how the string loads through it. Yes, I clean my guitar regularly and don't get poked by the string ends through the locking tuners. It's all in the angle of the cut.

Evidently, mileage surely does vary on this one.

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You dig?

They're not!

Some people think that 10 milligramms of laquer sanded off the armrest of their strat makes the guitar have a more "open" sound (ha ha ha), some people worry about 10 grams of missing wood in a humbucker routing compared to a single coil routing (less wood = less sound and less sustain), etc etc etc and they keep fumbling around with their perfect guitars over and over again. No other guitar is that much messed with like the Fender Strat.
Compared to that I consider my thoughts reasonable and practicable.
Why not improve minor things if there's a plausible reason for it?

The question quoted above could be adressed to almost EVERYONE in this forum.
We guitarists are crazy about the tiniest details of our beloved guitars and in my case it is the tuners (besides other tiny details).

For example: I also don't like screw in trem arms. So I use Wilkinson trems on every strat project, they have pop in arms and work as good as Fender trems.

After all, it's our hobby and almost everyone of us tries to get the best out of his/her instrument, including convenience.
Of course there's different tastes and of course there's advantages and disadvantages in the different designs, but in this case - vintage tuners vs standard tuners - IMHO there's absolutely NO ADVANTAGE on the standard tuners side. Ignoring the pokey ends just because someone just don't bother with that doesn't make them better.

There's a difference in LIKING something or simply IGNORING the disadvantages.

_________________
Kindest regards from Germany, Dee
My recordings --> http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_mu ... dID=564337
STRATS ROCK!!! but Teles and Firebirds, too!

I personally dislike the Klusons. It's not that I would refuse to buy a guitar that came with them or anything because I have had a number of guitars with Klusons over the years. They work well enough, I guess. They're just not my favourite. I clean and polish my guitars, too. I do it when all the strings are off during a string change. I also cut my pokey ends pretty short with a pair of end nippers but even if I sometime can't find the nippers and have to use sidecutters that extra ¼" does not present me with any issues I can't live with. I find sealed tuners feel smoother and sturdier and they have a more professional look to them. I dislike the look of Klusons. They look to me like something somebody cobbed together in the basement. That's just my opinion and it's one that has not changed since I was a boy.

On a side note: I have heard people say that it's wrong to remove all your strings at the same time, that you should change one string at a time, that it's somehow bad for your guitar to remove all of the string tension from the neck. I say bah-humbug. I've been playing guitar for 42 years and I have owned more guitars than I can count. I have always removed all the strings at once on every single guitar and I have never once had any kind of problem arising from it. That's just an old wives tale. There's nothing wrong with changing all your stings at once and don't let anybody tell you differently.

2¢

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

Locking tuners are great. You can snip
em close, But I do prefer Vintage kluson

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"Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift. That is why it is called the present."

oogway, kungfu panda 2008

+1 !
It's only bad to leave your neck laying around for months without relieving the trussrod.
Removing the strings all at the same time is no problem at all, I always do that, too.
But I also clean my guitars in between string changes. Cleaning isn't my only issue with the standard tuners though.

_________________
Kindest regards from Germany, Dee
My recordings --> http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_mu ... dID=564337
STRATS ROCK!!! but Teles and Firebirds, too!

Bit of a clean freak are we? Not to worry, we all have one form of idiosycrasy or another.

Sorry. I just had to.

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Just think of how awesome a guitar player you could have been by now if you had only spent the last 10 years practicing instead of obsessing over pickups and roasted maple necks.

Sort of, ha ha ha.
I like my guitars shiny because I appreciate the value of musical instruments.
Every guitar I ever bought new still looks like new.

I'm not a fan of f****ed up instruments which were not taken care of and were treated with no respect regarding the value (in short terms: relic).
Once I get my instruments from the manufacturers for free I might change my mind ....... or rather NOT.
I guess the worst fate a guitar can have is ending up with an endorser.
If you haven't payed it yourself, you just don't care.

_________________
Kindest regards from Germany, Dee
My recordings --> http://www.soundclick.com/bands/page_mu ... dID=564337
STRATS ROCK!!! but Teles and Firebirds, too!

For me, slotted posts are much easier and faster to restring than side-hole tuners. Locking tuners may be even faster/easier to restring, but I've never had tuning stability issues that needed the extra complexity of locking mechanisms.

The lack of pokey string ends is just a minor fringe benefit, but I do appreciate it. Another minor fringe benefit: if you're replacing pickups or rewiring, you can loosen the strings and simply lift them off the slotted posts. Take off the pickguard and do yer stuff, then pop the coiled ends of the strings back onto the posts and retune. (With regular tuners you can capo the strings at the nut and take off the neck, which is actually a little easier but a lot of people don't like to mess with the neck screws.) That's a good way to evaluate the changes your mods have -- it eliminates the variable of new strings vs old strings.

"Why would anybody want to have those modern standard tuners... Why were they invented in the first place??? Cost cutting purposes??"

Regular side-hole posts have been around since the dawn of steel-string guitars. Kluson invented "Safety Post" slotted-post tuners in the '40s, originally for lap steels which were a bigger fad than regular guitars at the time (Fender made lap steels before he started making guitars). The pokey string ends on regular tuners are more of a threat to your palm and sleeve when they're resting on your thigh facing up.

Leo had used Kluson Safety Post's on the K&F and Fender lap steels, so he continued to use them when he started building guitars. He was a big enough customer that when he needed special oversized tuners for his wacky radical idea of building a fretted bass guitar, they made them for him. It was a feature pretty unique to Fender and became so associated with them that when they switched to Schaller-made "F" tuners they had them built with slotted posts.

But other than Kluson stamped and "F" tuners (and copies), slotted posts have never caught on for guitar tuners. They baffle some people who are used to standard side-hole posts -- if you cut them too long or too short you can have problems, some people can't get the B and hi E to stay in, etc. Side-holes so overwhelmingly dominate the market that there's little variety in slotted types. So Fender gives people what they want -- regular ol' side-hole posts like just about every other guitar in the world. Reissues and some specialty guitars get slotted tuners, but AmStds and MIM Stds outsell them.