Details
The smoothest, strongest, most positive banjo tuner now available!
Solid brass construction, in nickel plated finish or natural brass. Choice of ebony or boxwood buttons, in addition to the more traditional ivoroid.
They require a 3/8" diameter hole, so they're a drop-in replacement for most standard 4:1 planetary pegs.
Because these tuners work perfectly on so many different instruments, they come without fancy packaging, and are priced individually rather than in sets of 4, 6 or whatever.
A bit of background:
This one is personal for me - the first successful banjo tuning peg suitable for use on guitar. In particular, Martin style OM-18 and OM-28 instruments made around 1930 were originally equipped with banjo pegs. Those low-ratio geared tuners need to be adjusted so tightly that they're difficult to tune or keep in tune. Around 2004 I decided to embark on a project that became more of a journey than I expected.
Unless you've been living with me, you probably are unaware of the many hundreds of hours I've spent tinkering on "non-gear-driven" banjo peg designs. My first efforts were with preloaded ball bearings in a planetary arrangement. I went through quite a few iterations over the first few years, developing a 9:1 drive tuner that worked very smoothly. It worked well on banjo strings, but just wasn't strong enough to handle the high tension of guitar strings.
In 2010, I finally hit on the idea of using a completely different mechanism, and made what I believe was the world's first banjo tuner with a cycloidal reduction drive. Unlike other designs, the cycloidal drive is super strong, smooth and positive. Some health issues intervened, and few years later I shared my efforts with one of our favorite banjo makers, Bill Rickard. I'd heard that he was in the process of improving the "conventional" planetary 4:1 banjo tuners. After a number of discussions on the phone, I convinced him of the need for higher ratio tuners for the guitar community. Ultimately, I gave him my prototype with the hope he might be inspired to perfect the design and actually bring a solid and useful product to market.
