Anyone struggle to tune your guitar?  Do you use non standard tunings? Need to change them between songs in a hurry?  In that case you’ll love the Tronical Auto Tuners.  If you don’t, and you find it easy enough to tune your guitar and it stays in tune then you’ll probably think they’re a pain in the a**.

These new Les Pauls really are stunning, although there are just a couple of bits I don’t like or don’t understand.

That new adjustable nut.  One of the greatest attributes of the Les Paul it it’s sustain.  That relies on good contact with the strings and the woodwork but this new nut effectively balances on 2 screw heads less then 1mm across.

As for those tuners, what can I say.  A great idea but the more I search the net the more I read about all sorts of problems.  The owner of this one had come to the point were he wants to replace them with manual heads.

And that nut with a good old fashioned bone one.

As you can see from the size of the blank, it’s going to take a bit of work to get it to fit.

Once the shape is right I’ll mark up the positions of the “E” strings..

taking into account the thickness of the bass string.

and then the others using the string spacing rule.

Getting the angle of the new heads right is important.  I started of with them at a right-angle to the side of the head but that didn’t look right.

so I reduced the angle just  little, making sure that they are balanced each side of the head.

That looks right..

Mark up the position for the screw holes.

and drill pilot holes….

fit the screws….

and gently tighten the locking nuts.

All I need to do now is to cut the string slots down to the right depth as a part of a standard 5 point setup.

There it goes, back to a traditional head..

And the good thing is, it can be very easily returned to factory standard.

A word or 2 from the owner:

“You did an awesome job on it matey thank you”

Check out how it turned out on YouTube

For details of what else I can check out my website:  www.guitar-george.co.uk