Official Luthiers Forum!

I have always admired the simplicity of the friction peg as used on Flamenco guitars and early instruments. Pulling them down slightly, turning them, and then pushing them up tight to use friction to have them hold the string at pitch is wonderfully simple.
Unfortunately, after a certain point the tension of the string over comes the friction available to counter it.
The design I propose would mesh metal teeth to hold the string at pitch and should counter the greater tension of metal strings. Rather than pulling the peg down, the player would push it up to release the gears, turn the tuner, and then allow the flat spring to push the gears back into mesh.
Similar to a wooden peg the design doesn't create a great deal of mechanical advantage for the user, however a simple device to add leverage could be placed on the tuner button for those of us with less hand strength.
Enclosed is an un-dimensioned drawing for your consideration - it's the best my draftsman could do on short notice (and she will be insulted if you say it looks like chicken scratch).

The tuner as drawn above is designed to be recessed into the peghead. with a slight modification of the position of the internal gear and a re-proportioning of the tuning post the tuner could be mounted to the back of the peghead in a more conventional fashion.

Great to see our discussion inspiring people But as much as I do love friction pegs too, I don't think this approach will work by itself due to the limited number of positions it can settle into. It will need some kind of finetuner like is used on violin family instruments. If you've never tried tuning steel strings with friction pegs (I have), the difference between too low and too high is nearly imperceptible. 4:1 Pegheds are usable, but still annoyingly touchy.

I agree with Dennis as to the number of teeth and limited notches to settle into , the smaller the teeth the better it would fine tune... The idea certainly has merit. Honestly , I believe that you could get it so close the "average" player couldnt tell the difference . Some great improvements have come about AFTER people said ..... It wont work .... Dont give up on the idea for sure

_________________
The Shallower the depth of the stream , The Louder the Babble !
The Taking Of Offense Is the Life Course Of The Stupid One !
Wanna Leave a Better Planet for our Kids? How about Working on BETTER KIDS for our Planet !
Forgiveness is the ability to accept an apology that you will probably NEVER GET
The truth will set you free , But FIRST, it will probably Piss you Off !
Creativity is allowing yourself to make Mistakes, Art is knowing which ones to Keep !
The Saddest thing anyone can do , is push a Loyal Person to the point that they Dont Care Anymore
Never met a STRONG person who had an EASY past !
http://wiksnwudwerks.blogspot.com/
http://www.facebook.com/groups/GatewayA ... rAssembly/

Here's another option--these tuners actually work quite well, and the patent explains how they overcome all of the problems with metal tuners...

https://patents.google.com/patent/US9268A/en?q=(james+ashborne)&oq=james+ashborne

As a sidenote, Ashborne held the very first banjo patent.

Here's a modern replica made by banjo maker James Hartel
http://www.minstrelbanjo.com/patpeg.JPG.jpg

The simplest solutions sometimes work best.

Dave

The drawings are more for conceptualizing the idea, rather than being "working drawings".
I do recognize that a large number of small teeth would allow for finer tuning, and the fact that they would all be engaged around the entire perimeter would mean that large teeth would not be necessary to hold the tension on a steel string.
The "gear" could have a diameter of 20mm, and so a circumference of approximately 68mm, which compared to a tuner post diameter of about 4mm gives a reduction of about 5:1. If each tooth measured 1mm, and you had 34 teeth on the gear, a movement of one tooth would produce a movement of 0.4mm at the post. This might be fine enough to bring the strings into tune. Obviously, as you put a greater number of "wraps" around the post you lose some of this advantage.

Hi Dave,
Thank you for linking the Ashborne patent. Banjo strings generally don't have as great a tension as guitar strings.
Some years back I had considered using viola pegs and inserting metal "nails" of small diameter into the ends to wrap the strings around. I think this is similar to the idea of the Ashborne peg.

Inventing things can be fun, but often what we come up with is not as practical as what already exists. It is more an exercise in "fashion" rather than a practical advancement.

The main thing the Ashborne tuner does is increases the diameter of the peg where it goes through the peghead and provides a lot bigger friction surface while maintaining a small diameter for the string to go around for finer tuning. Don't know if it would hold full tension steel guitar strings or not--at the time the patent was made, banjo strings were gut as were guitar strings. But the Ashborne pegs I've used hold remarkably well on the strings they were holding. At any rate, the bigger diameter having more surface to grab seemed like a similar concept to the teeth in your drawings.

I've studied old banjo patents for years, and you're spot on about sometimes the "new" isn't nearly as practical as what was already there. Some of those old patents are truly bizarre!

Dave

Hi Dave,
I did snap to the fact that the Ashborne tuner did have an increased diameter where it went through the peghead. I normally use wooden violin pegs for friction pegs on guitars (which I failed to mention). The idea to use viola pegs was to increase the diameter where the peg passed through the peghead. The nail in the top of the peg would also reduce the place where the string winds on, with a similar benefit to what the Ashborne peg would have. It's possible I saw and was inspired by that design many years ago, but my memory fails me.

Unlike a wooden peg, the gear and stationary plate does not rely on friction to hold the tension of the string. It relies in the interference of the teeth of the movable gear with the teeth of the stationary one. Ideally the greater the number of teeth that mesh the greater the holding power of the tuner. It is possible that a fewer number of teeth could be used on the stationary plate and still provide enough holding power to keep the string at tension.

Here is another design that could potentially create a compact light weight tuner using hardware store parts. It would require the use of a small Allen wrench to tune the strings. It is essentially a variation on the other design, and might be easier to fabricate.