Coolest Tuners ive ever seen !

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tangimango

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i came across a rare ukulele book containing detailed info and pictures of mostly all vintage ukuleles around the world.

this was one of the coolest ukuleles ive seen.

 
That's awesome! I've never seen anything like that!
 
Those remind me of the fine tuners on a violin. And if they work like fine tuners, you can split hairs upon hairs when tuning.

finetunersviolin.jpg
 
Like the fine tuners on a Floyd Rose. Awesome! I'd love a custom uke with a set of those.
 
They are Excellent....good price too.
 
They're called 'Preston tuners' and are used on original Portuguese instruments.
 
Uke-Conn said:
That's really interesting! A whole different concept for adjusting tension -
Click to expand...

Actually, tension is based upon the string weight, scale length and the pitch you're tuning the string to, so these tuners will have no effect on that whatsoever. Given how they're made, how the string sits in the tuner and how you tune them, they may alter the feel of the string a bit (especially given the angle of the string coming off that tuner), but the tension will remain constant.


Ukejenny said:
Those remind me of the fine tuners on a violin. And if they work like fine tuners, you can split hairs upon hairs when tuning.
Click to expand...

+1

They also remind me of the tuners on headless guitars and basses (where the tuners are actually at the bridge). Those are finely tuned as well, so if you've got your action and intonation where you want it, these tuners will be awesome.
 
I've seen tuners like that on Mountain Dulcimers.
 
They will not work for nylon strings...too much stretch factor.

Tuners like this were used on some early English citterns; they're standard on Portuguese guitarras; they're made for mandolins (8 strings); and obviously they're made for the ancestor of the uke, the Portuguese "machete" or Brazilian "cavaquinho"...that being a steel stringed cousin of the uke.

The players who use instruments with these tuners also make their own end loops with a little crank machine that goes into the case.

Google Ron Fernandes.
 
One Bad Monkey said:
+1

They also remind me of the tuners on headless guitars and basses (where the tuners are actually at the bridge). Those are finely tuned as well, so if you've got your action and intonation where you want it, these tuners will be awesome.
Click to expand...

The way fine tuners help on a violin (especially for a novice player like myself) I wonder why they don't come standard on ever string instrument out there! Then again, I need to keep trying to train my ear and not rely on little metal knobs, I guess. But, heck, they sure made life easy when I was playing violin. I was not the least ashamed to have them on all four strings. I needed all the help I could get.
 
tangimango said:
i came across a rare ukulele book containing detailed info and pictures of mostly all vintage ukuleles around the world.

this was one of the coolest ukuleles ive seen.

Click to expand...


neat looking very unqiue i feel this kind of look would appeal to the steam punk crowd.
 
They use something very similar (as in "exactly the same only different") on headless guitars. I first saw them when I was kicking around on Cigar Box Nation.

You can make a real basic version of these with a bolt, a wing nut, and a solid block of something drilled out to keep the bolts aligned. With a fairly basic workshop you can actually make a fairly professional looking set.
 
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