The tuners or tuners of an instrument are a fundamental part of any musical instrument. If this component does not work properly, your instrument will be difficult to refine and also the tuning will not be maintained for a long time.

What types of tuning machines are there?

Basically there are pins with gear and without gear:

Tuning machines without gear

The simplest are those that do not have gears and are usually as simple as a piece of wood or plastic conical that is stuck in another conical hole in the blade of the instrument. These pegs "stick" were the first that existed and today are still used in all the instruments of the violin family and flamenco guitars.

The next step is a plug composed of several metal and plastic parts that are assembled by a screw. This screw also allows the adjustment of the friction force that prevents the pin from turning with the tension of the rope. The metallic friction pins are still used in small box instruments such as ukulele, charango, canary timple, cavaquiño, etc. because they are very light and allow to make the shovel a more suitable size with the instrument. The problem with these pins is that if we tighten that screw a lot, it becomes very hard to tune. The pins of family 228 solve this problem because they have Teflon washers between the metal parts to reduce friction.

Today, the best pin without gear is our model 229-BK-BK because it includes an internal spring that helps maintain the right tension to allow fine tuning but at the same time stay tuned.

Tuning machines with gear

The best pegs are those that have a gear that joins the axis on which the rope is wound with the button that we use to turn it. The most common is that these two axes are at 90º and the ratio of the gear is 1:14 (for every 14 turns of the button, the rope gives a single turn). With these pins we can fine tune our instrument in a comfortable and precise way.

There are gear tuners with individual plugs or grouped in special configurations for guitar, charango, bandurria, lute, canary timple, etc.

Are there tuners for nylon strings and for steel strings?
There are two types of materials for the shaft where the rope is wound: metal and plastic. The metal is usually used in steel ropes because if the plastic was used it would be marked and damaged. For nylon cords, plastic or metal shafts are usually used. What is interesting is that the plastic axes are usually 10 mm in diameter and this larger size helps us to fine tune more accurately. The nylon strings stretch more than the metal strings and need more turns to change the tone.

Are there standard-size tuners for guitar and other instruments?

Unfortunately, there is no ISO standard that regulates the sizes of musical instruments, but it has been the tradition that has been determining the dimensions of them.

With the pegs for musical instruments the same thing happens as the rest of the dimensions: there are some standardized dimensions for the diameter of the axes and the distance between them, but the rest of the dimensions, where the fixing screws go, etc. will depend on each manufacturer .

Here are some basic rules according to the instruments:

Classic guitar tuners: they have 10 mm diameter shafts and the distance between the axes is 35 mm.

Laud and bandurria tuning machines: they have axes of 6 or 10 mm in diameter and the distance between the axles is 25 mm.

Canarian timple tuners: they have axes of 6 or 10 mm in diameter and the distance between the axes is 25 mm. As it is a 5-string instrument, the pegbox is not symmetrical, but the left side has 3 strings and the right side has 2 strings. There was a Spanish manufacturer named Fustero who made these 3 + 2 timple tuners, but he retired and currently the way to replace them is by using individual gear pegs of the 227 series.

Charango tuning machines: they have axes of 6 or 10 mm in diameter and the distance between the axes is 25 mm.

Tuning machines of four Venezuelan: they have axes of 6 or 10 mm in diameter and the distance between the axes is 25 mm.

Ukulele tuning machines: They usually use individual pins, either friction or gear.