Waverly Friction tuning pegs - REVIEW

bazmaz

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Thanks for the review Baz.

Are these pegs really nice and easy enough to justify the price?

That's has been putting me off trying them since the cheaper Grover pegs, even the Champion ones are a real PITA for me, and after trying a few different types of Grovers, had to swear off friction pegs, and go either to geared tuners, the Gotoh UPT, or the Pegheds instead, depending upon the uke....

With the cheaper pegs, the herky-jerky movements for adjusting and the too-tight/too-loose hysteresis is a frustration I need to avoid. The cheaper pegs seems to rely upon compression of the plastic button for applying tension, and therefore friction to the metal parts that either contact other metal parts or plastic or delrin washers in some magical layers to make it turn smoothly, but I found that even on sopranos, when I got the peg to turn smoothly, it would then slip, and when it was tight enough not to slip, it was VERY hard to turn, and this is with trying the adjustment screw in as little as 1/8-rotation increments....
 
@Booli - personally - if it wasn't for the fact I bought these for a small ukulele headstock - no - I would stick with Grovers myself - they are wonderful though!

@Uke1950 - in my experience there is much not to trust about cheap friction pegs. Never had any issue with high quality friction pegs. Unfortunately I find that the cheap pegs tend to give the good quality pegs a bad name - unfairly.
 
@Booli - personally - if it wasn't for the fact I bought these for a small ukulele headstock - no - I would stick with Grovers myself - they are wonderful though!

@Uke1950 - in my experience there is much not to trust about cheap friction pegs. Never had any issue with high quality friction pegs. Unfortunately I find that the cheap pegs tend to give the good quality pegs a bad name - unfairly.

Thanks for the reply Baz :)

I agree about the cheap ones, they really burned me on friction pegs from the start. Having a completlely painless experience with both the Gotoh UPT and Pegheds (one set of each installed on different ukes), which are priced around $60-70 USD, it's hard for me to justify spending $50+ on high-end friction pegs...given the torture I've had with the cheap friction pegs.

I need to get hands-on with a decent set of the Waverly's or similar, before I would commit to buying them, but I DO like the fact that the Waverly buttons are so small.
 
One of the major problems with bad performing fiction tuners, cheap or expensive that I have found over the years, is that they were installed poorly. Even cheaper friction tuners can turn smoothly and perform well is they are installed with the correct size hole in the peg head, and care taken to not over adjust the tension.
 
One of the major problems with bad performing fiction tuners, cheap or expensive that I have found over the years, is that they were installed poorly. Even cheaper friction tuners can turn smoothly and perform well is they are installed with the correct size hole in the peg head, and care taken to not over adjust the tension.

In my case, I never had the option for the initial hole size, as some friction tuners were either pre-installed into a 7.5mm hole as it came with the uke, or was a retrofit done by me, also into a pre-existing 7.5mm hole, originaly used by either crappy friction tuners, or geared tuners.

Seems like they all make the hole wide enough for the bushing, without caring about the width of the tuner shaft, and without having a stepped-width diameter inside the hole. It may be wrong, but that is what I would do.

With the hole on the headstock face, stepped wider to accommodate the bushing, and then thinner out to the shaft with the proper chamfer or countersink for the button-end tapered-bit of the shaft to bite into the wood...but I am no luthier :)

With the retrofit/installation of the Gotoh UPT tuners on my concert Flea, I hand-turned a UniBit down to an 8.5mm diameter hole, and then they slid right in and tightened down easy.
 
+1 on the Waverly's. I had an aversion to friction tuners based on reading what I now consider uninformed commentary "just touch them and they go out of tune" in an early Ukulele magazine.
Then I was able to obtain a beat up Gibson almost 90 years old, and with nothing more than tightening the adjustment screws, those worked smoothly and held perfectly, as well as any geared tuners. Those look exactly the same as the current Waverlys, so I bought Waverly's thinking I'd need to replace them but ended up using them for the uke I made for myself.
Once you have a little practice with firmly turning just a tiny amount, friction tuners can be quicker to tune and especially changing strings.

Advantages for first time build design:
- the hole required is very small, so you're not weakening the headstock as much as with four larger holes.
- no screw holes, so if you ever want to replace with geared or anything else, there is nothing to fill or cover up.
- much lighter than geared, almost no chance of getting a neck-heavy imbalance.
-those above apply to other friction tuners, but - tensioning evened out by a spring, compressed by the adjustment screw in an advantage of the waverly design.

The important thing on iinstallation is that the angle of chamfer is different on the top and bottom, so get the special angle countersink bit from Stemac or elsewhere - which is only for one not both of these angles - and pay attention to your angle of countersink on the other side for a good fit and maximum contact for smoothness and holding.

Now I wish I had these on some other ukes.

-Vinnie in Juneau
 
I personally like the Grover 4's. They dropped right into the headstock of an early 70s Kamaka I had bought that
had useless tuners. I did not want to do any drilling and by replacing the bushings with a small stainless washer
they work perfectly and look great. Martin also uses them on their Mexican ukes that use friction tuners.
 
I never really understood the hate for Friction Tuners. I like them if they're decent/good ones, which for the most part has been my luck. They're much, much, much easier to re-string. Once you get the strings up to tune and don't have to frequently re-tune it, they generally hold great/ hold steady.
Now, if you have ones that slip, they're super-annoying. So I guess I could see why they do get some hatred.
 
There's a huge spectrum of friction tuners and while bad geared ones work okay, bad friction ones are a PITA. I have great ones on my KoAloha, good ones on my Timms and crap ones on my own electric uke.
I like friction tuners so long as they are good quality!
 
Frictions tuners make restringing pleasantly fast, without the need for a winder. I have them on my KoAloha LN pineapple soprano, the KoAloha Opio concert, and the 90-year old Washburn soprano. The latter has its original tuners still and even after nearly a century they work perfectly fine and hold the tune as well as the UPTs and geared tuners. Aesthetically, I prefer friction tuners on small ukuleles.
 
I wonder how well they do compared to the Grover UPT(L)'s - Anyone who can give me an answer to this? :)
 
I can't compare them to the Waverly pegs, but I have the UPTs on my Black Bear soprano, and I'll say they are better than either regular geared tuners or friction tuners. They combine the best aspects of both tuner types into something wonderful. The only downside is perhaps that their base is a little big, which looks somewhat off on a narrow, thin soprano headstock, but functionally they are fantastic. Very smooth.
 
I agree with what Mivo said. I have UPTs on my 2 custom concerts and they are great! I could see how the base could be a little large for a soprano, but they fit in well on a concert.

UPTs & Pegheds aside, I would much rather have friction tuners. IMHO, they look a lot better than the geared "ears" sticking out. And since I mainly play soprano and concert the weight on the headstock is much less. I recently played a Tiwi taropatch that had 8 friction pegs on the headstock. I thought it would be a nightmare to keep the head up, but they were unbelievably light and I had no issue at all!
 
I have Waverly friction tuners on my two Laughlin ukuleles. They look correct for the period, (just like the 1920s Grovers that they copy). I actually prefer the Gotoh friction tuners for feel, but the buttons are a little large and they use Phillips screws and that always seems wrong on a vintage style instrument.

My biggest concerns with the Waverly friction tuners is that they use a 60 degree conical taper for the friction surface and that is nearly ideal for splitting the wood. While this may be a simple and elegant tuner, I worry about the potential to eventually crack or split the head. I realize that the Grovers from the 1920s were the same design, but I also wonder how many of them caused the heads to split. I am considering changing them out for Gotoh, but I have not made a final decision yet. If I do change them, I will probably re-machine the buttons to a smaller size and make up some slotted stainless steel screws that would look more appropriate, (polished stainless can easily pass for nickel). Being a former Tool and Die Maker and present a Mechanical Engineer, I find that I am very picky about hardware, so tuners really stand out for me.
 
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My biggest concerns with the Waverly friction tuners is that they use a 60 degree conical taper for the friction surface and that is nearly ideal for splitting the wood. While this may be a simple and elegant tuner, I worry about the potential to eventually crack or split the head. I realize that the Grovers from the 1920s were the same design, but I also wonder how many of them caused the heads to split...

Thanks Django,
Good point. My 1925 Gibson seems fine and the peghead is pretty thin one piece mahogany, but I think it spent about 50 years not being used and they were so loose they were untunable when I got it. I've gotten used to cranking down the screws very tight but I think I'll back them off so they're adequate but not squeaky tight.

Installing them as a replacement where the holes are bigger than they need to be might not be a good idea.

For new designs, I guess it's not just aesthetics to shape the peghead wider at the upper end, so putting the tuners the same distance from the outer edges puts them not in the same line of the grain in the wood.

Really appreciate your input as a mechanical engineer & tool & die maker in NH - where they really know this stuff, at least when I grew up there.

Vinnie in Juneau, AK
 
Just a little update. I wrote to Waverly, (Stewart MacDonald), with my concerns regarding the conical taper. They said that they should be OK as long as they are not over tightened, (not really very comforting). I also wrote to Tim Laughlin, and he wrote back with a nice and detailed letter. Tim feels that the Gotohs are a better tuner, but likes the vintage look of the Waverlys. He did not dismiss my concern, but he said that he has never seen a split head caused by this type of tuner, or any taper tuner.

I like the nice vintage look of the Gotoh friction tuners, but I think that the Banjo size buttons that they use, (and Grover too), look too large for a Ukulele. I was able to buy some Ivoroid banjo buttons from Stewart Macdonald and machine them down to the size of a late 1920s Martin button. They look great on my Martin 3K with Nickel Gotoh tuners, but the screws are still Phillips, so making screws will be the next task. After that, I will change out the Waverly tuners on my Laughlins to Gotoh with modified buttons and custom screws. I consider the Laughlins to be irreplaceable, and I would hate to pick one up some day and find a crack in the head. It may be unlikely, but I don't think that the risk is worth it. My goal is not to hurt sales of Waverly tuners. I simply wanted to voice a concern, so please take it with a grain of salt.

I also asked Stewart MacDonald if they had any plans to make an accurate vintage type replacement tuner for ukuleles that was not the current Waverly. They told me that they would pass that suggestion along and that they were always looking for new products. If anyone in the UU community would like to see this happen, an email to Stewart Macdonald might be helpful. If they receive multiple requests, we might see a good, vintage style replacement that does not require custom machined parts or the risk of cracked heads.
 
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I did end up changing the tuners on one of my Laughlins. The replacements are Gotoh with modified Ivoroid banjo buttons, (reduced to the size on my late 1920s Martin). I made the screws from 304 Stainless Steel. Stainless looks almost exactly like Nickel Plate when polished.T1.jpgT2.jpgT3.jpgT4.jpg

The other Ukulele shown is a Kiwaya with stock buttons and screws for comparison.
 
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