 Ball ends that are properly seated against the bridge plate will help a guitar stay in tune.
Regardless of how well you play, an out-of-tune guitar will put a damper on your sound. As anyone who goes to jams or open mics knows, acoustic guitars are out of tune far more often than they should be. The most obvious ways to ensure you play in tune are to train your ear, work on your chops, and use a good tuning device, such as a tuning fork or an electronic tuner. But none of these will help if your guitar suffers from a number of problems that can make tuning difficult and a guitar uncooperative.
Not counting structural problems such as cracked pegheads, loose braces, lifting bridges, poorly placed saddles, and even loose necks on today’s bolt-on-neck acoustics, tuning difficulties can often be solved by something as simple as a change of strings; but sometimes the culprit is found in a poorly fitted nut, worn-out tuning machines, or incorrectly installed strings. Let’s take a look at what you can do to make sure your guitar is in good enough shape to stay in tune.
Fix Tight Nut Slots
Tight nut slots that pinch the strings are a common source of tuning trouble. Simply looking at the nut slots won’t tell you much, but careful listening as you tune will. Signs of problems are:
- A clicking or pinging sound when you tune a string.
- An in-tune string that becomes flat after you bend a note. You stretch the string when you bend it, and tight nut slots will hold it in the slack position and not let it slide back through.
- A string that suddenly goes sharp or flat for no reason. This may also indicate that the string is poorly installed at the bridge, as described below.
In the short run, you can sometimes eliminate these friction-based issues by lubricating the nut’s string slots. Pencil lead (which is actually graphite) scribbled into nut slots is the vintage lubricant standby, and the precursor of today’s nut lubes like GHS’s GraphitALL, Stewart MacDonald’s Guitar Grease, or Big Bends’ Nut Sauce. For the long haul, though, ask your guitar tech to smooth and reshape the nut slots—a task requiring properly shaped nut-slotting files, experience, and
a skilled hand (see “DIY Nut Replacement,” June 2009).
Adjust Tuning Machines
Over time, tuning machines can vibrate loose, and the wood they’re mounted to may shrink slightly too—either or both will cause once-tight-fitting tuners to loosen and create tuning problems. Tightening them is as easy as getting out a small screwdriver (either Phillips or flat-blade may be used) and, in most cases, a hex wrench or socket (usually 10 mm but sometimes 7⁄16 inches). Use the screwdriver to tighten the tuner mounting screws on the back of the headstock and the wrench to tighten the hex nut and washer at the base of each post on the face of the peghead. It’s best to do any work on the tuners with the strings removed.
Some tuners—generally vintage tuners and their copies, as well as some less-expensive ones—don’t use hex nuts for support; instead, they have press-in bushings or grommets. These sometimes work loose and rise up above the peghead face, and they can be reseated by pushing them back down into their hole. You need to remove the strings and all the tuners to do this so that you can lay the back of the peghead on a flat surface while pressing the grommet in from above. This is a bit of a hassle of course, but usually if one grommet has worked loose others have, too, and you can press them all flush at the same time.
There are times when tuners need to be replaced completely. If your tuners develop excess play in the gears (noticeable movement of the knob without the post turning) or if the knobs are stiff and hard to turn, it might be time for a replacement set. In general, enclosed die-cast tuners (such as those made by Gotoh, Grover, and Schaller) are superior to similarly priced open-back tuners. However, notable exceptions are the high-end open-back tuners made by Gotoh, Graf, Sperzel, and Waverly. Unless you know for sure that replacement tuners will drop right in with all mounting holes a perfect match (a good dealer or repair person should be able to tell you), have a pro install your new tuners. This repair will involve filling the existing mounting holes in the peghead with wood dowels and then redrilling the holes to match the new tuners—not a difficult job, but one that requires experience and a fair number of tools.
Install Strings Properly
 A ball end that is hung up at the bridge pin will cause the string to slip out of tune.
Faulty string installation at the bridge and the tuning-key posts will always cause your guitar to go out of tune. Avoid this by installing new strings carefully every time you change them, paying attention to two things: how you seat the strings at the bridge (if your guitar has a pinless bridge—like most Breedloves, Lowdens, and Ovations, and many Takamines—you don’t have to worry about this), and how you fasten them at the tuning posts.
At the bridge, it’s important for the ball end to be firmly seated in front of the bridge pin and up snug against the bridge plate (the bridge plate reinforces the inside of the top on the opposite side of the bridge itself) on the inside of the guitar. Make sure that the ball end doesn’t get caught at the tip of the bridge pin (an easy way to avoid this is to put a slight forward bend into the string, just above the ball, prior to installation) or that the bridge pins don’t have such a tight fit that the string itself can’t slip into place. On older guitars, it’s possible that the area around the bridge-pin holes on the bridge plate is worn, making the holes larger than they need to be, and thereby not allowing the ball ends to seat properly, because they pull upward into the bridge plate, and even the top wood.
Proper string installation at the tuning pegs is also critical. Securing the strings with a self-locking tie (by which the strings’ own tension keeps them secure) ensures that there is no slippage. It’s important to not use too few or too many windings around the peg. In general, it’s a good idea to have at least one winding above the hole in the peg and a couple below, and you definitely shouldn’t have so many windings that the string starts a second layer around the peg. The slack needed in the string prior to winding depends on the gauge, so getting it right will take some experimenting at first. Make sure to keep tension on the string at all times during the winding process.
Stretch New Strings
Even properly installed, new strings will go out of tune quickly if you don’t stretch the slack out of them. I do this by holding the string down close to the fretboard with my left (fretting) hand, then squeezing and pulling it between the thumb and second and third fingers of my right (picking) hand. I do this stretch up over the end of the fretboard where the string tension isn’t too stiff, doing it several times until I don’t need to retune after the stretch.
You’re In Tune!
If you look for these potential problem areas and take care of any issues your guitar might have, you should be able to play in tune like never before. If you do continue to still have tuning problems, look for some of the bigger issues of structural damage mentioned in the introduction to this article, and if in doubt, have a professional repair person assess the guitar.
Photos credit, Dan Erlewine
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