What are the best machine heads for an electric guitar?
The machine heads are an important part that allows to use your instrument
at its best, as they influence, together with the nut and the bridge, a crucial
aspect of any guitar: the tuning stability, mixed blessing of any guitar player.
“Guitarists spend half
their time tuning and the other half playing out of tune”
said once Andrés Segovia, one of the greatest
classical guitarists of all time.
From a technical point of view, the tuners are geared machines used to tune the
instrument acting on the tension of the strings. Each string is paired to a pin
and a tuning knob. The two most common types are the standard machine heads and
locking machine heads.
With standard machine heads, each string is wrapped around the capstan,
linked to its tuning knob using a worm gear. Most guitars have these kind of
tuning machine as a standard dotation.
Locking machines
Locking machines are used to maximize the tuning stability, ruined by strings
settling down or intense string bending and use of the tremolo bridge.
There are several technical solutions, but the most common employs a rotating mechanism on the rear of each machine that locks the string in place without windings around the shaft, eliminating the need of a “settle down” process and countering the tension created by winding the string around the capstan.
Locking tuners on Soundsation RIDER-PRO guitar
Technical innovation:
automatic guitar tuning systems.
To complete our description, we would like to remind you that the latest
technologies allow for robotized tuning systems we couldn't even imagine only a
few years ago, (Tronical Tune system), able to tune a guitar in seconds and
very accurately, choosing among many preset tunings. The systems employs a PCB board
on the rear of the headstock (invisible to the audience) e 6 robotized locking
tuning machines, that definitively solve the problem presented by Segovia (even
if they are available only for electric and acoustic guitars!). These
breakthrough systems are a real godsend particularly for all those players using standard, dropped, open or
custom tunings.
And to conclude
Which tuning machines are best then? Our advice is to use locking machines on
guitars with a whammy bar and/or if your playing style requires strong bending and
vibrato, keeping in mind that these are only one of the elements contributing, within
your set up, to a stable tuning.
Soundsation offers electric guitars both with traditional machine heads
and with locking tuning machines.
The guitars with locking tuning machines are in the RIDER-PRO series.
Related articles
How to choose an electric guitar Pt #1 - The Body
How to choose an electric guitar Pt #2 - Neck and Fretboard