Wood peg tuners?

Wondering who has or is using wood or bone peg tuners for your soprano or concert ukulele. And your thoughts on same. How well do they work, do they keep their tune. Would you put them on a vintage Uke?

I've got wooden tapered pegs on a couple of my sopranos. They work fine, but do require patience and finesse to get it just right. There's no doubt about it - friction pegs and geared tuners are easier to use.

Tapered pegs hold their tune very well indeed. No worries in that department. I like the look of them on older ukes. If they were fitted as standard then I leave 'em like that. If an old uke has been converted to more modern tuners, I wouldn't try to convert back again. It's not a big issue for me.

John Colter

Oldtimer said:

Wondering who has or is using wood or bone peg tuners for your soprano or concert ukulele. And your thoughts on same. How well do they work, do they keep their tune. Would you put them on a vintage Uke?

Click to expand...

Argapa Ukes are built by a hobby builder, he’s made over 100 instruments and what he makes is sought after. Sven uses wooden pegs on many of his instruments, I don’t know why he uses them but they work for him and his customers - authentic too.

Personally I love simple friction tuners but my inclination is to avoid wooden pegs when possible and to stick to the metal ones. To my mind wooden friction pegs fall into the category of things that ‘can’ work well enough but have been superseded by better solutions. With the right builder it wouldn’t be a stopper for me though ... like I said Sven makes very nice instruments.

http://argapa.blogspot.com/2015/07/
http://argapa.blogspot.com/2020/08/videos-of-completed-ukes.html

If I had a vintage Uke then I would try to stick with the type of tuners already fitted. I wouldn’t gladly change to wooden pegs.

https://forum.ukuleleunderground.com/showthread.php?100521-Violin-style-friction-tuners
https://forum.ukuleleunderground.co...7-Wood-violin-pegs-Have-you-had-them-on-a-uke

I have wood pegs on an old vintage instrument. They work nicely and I have no complaints. I find they hold well and are easy to use. If they are fitted properly they should be fine.

All that said, I can understand why some might have complaints with them, especially if they are used to nice friction pegs or UPTs.

Thanks all for the input, probably will stick with the friction tuners on my Kamaka. I think they are Grovers, it think. Does anyone know what brand friction tuners Kamaka ukes use. Not the new UPT.

I have wooden pegs on a 1947 sopranino ukulele and find them rather difficult to tune but they hold the tuning very well. I will not exchange them on a vintage instrument but I wonder why nobody makes the peg itself thinner, as this will give you a sort of lower "gearing" making it easier to tune.

I also find it strange that all wooden tuners form guitar to ukulele are the same diameter. On violins the diameter changes with the size of the violin.