9 of the Best Contemporary Locking Tuners

May 26, 202308:00 by

Stefan Karlsson

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So I’ve pretty much covered every aesthetic and mechanically functional part of the guitar - starting with the headstock, then tremolo-bridges, pickups, body-shapes and fret markers. I’n not sure guitar electronic harnesses is sufficiently an interesting enough topic - so this Locking Tuning Peg feature may well be the last category - while I’ve still got at least 2 guitar body shape features to go! If there are other parts of aspects of a guitar that you want me to feature here - do let me know!

It is a prerequisite for me that all my guitars have locking tuners - for three important reasons - obviously ’Tuning Fidelity’ is critical - that is to say preserving the period that the guitar holds its tuning for. You then have ease of adjustment, and ease of maintenance. It’s far easier to use locking tuners than doing fancy figure of 8 style knots to secure your strings to the pegs. All my guitars have to have locking tuners - as much as they have to have Schaller strap-locks too!

There’s broadly 3 categories of locking tuner mechanisms. The most common one as visibly featured here is the bottom locking disc - which format can though add significant weight to the headstock part of the guitar - and can make it top-heavy and imbalanced. For that reason PRS fairly uniquely deploys a much smaller top-mounted screw - so the string is secured from the top rather than bottom of the mechanism. PRS calls this a ’Low Mass’ Locking Tuner - and you can see in the visual how it utilises far less metal in its construction and therefore saves significantly on weight / mass.

A third methodology is what I’m calling ’Tension-Lock’ which I think is what the higher-end Gotoh tuners employ - these have an interior cam that locks the string into position as you apply tension. Similar technology has been used in high end mountaineering and shipping (sailboats) rigs for a while - where an internal mechanism locks onto the rope or string as you apply tension and keeps it secured in place.

Some of these tuners also clip / cut the strings as part of the tightening and fixing mechanism. I’m surprised more don’t use the PRS style of tuners - as they are a really smart solution for ensuring your guitar doesn’t neck-dip from too much headstock weight!

I don’t think there are any surprises here or surprising omissions for that matter - these should really be the 9 most popular contemporary locking tuner options. Note the use of the word ’contemporary’ as I’m not really a fan at all of the blocky or rectangular ’Kluson’ style of tuners. The central gearing of these mechanisms is very obviously circular in nature - and that for me is a more ergonomic shape for these fixtures. I’ve tried to keep them consistent - so they’re all Nickel / Chrome editions for easy comparison - while you can get all manner of cool colours now - including Smoky Black and Gold - that for me really depends on the design and colours / schemes applied to the guitar - but all are valid for different contexts.

9 of the Best Contemporary Locking Tuners

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