Why do guitar tuners turn the wrong way?

[jazzereh]

Maybe this has been discussed someplace here and if so please direct me with a link.

In a normal world - construction, electrical, even twist ties - it would be 'normal' and expected that if you are tightening something, say a screw into a board or a wire onto a terminal, you turn it clockwise. Guitar tuners, to tighten, ie raise the pitch, of a string are turned counter clockwise.

I've wondered about this for a long time. Hasn't kept me up at night, yet, but figured I'd finally ask.

Why?

[hubcapsc]

I wonder... how complex do you want your tuners to be?



-Mike

[Steve DeRosa]

I'm thinking it's because you're turning them toward the top of the headstock and away from the bridge, the natural direction if you were stretching the strings by hand...

[coyote95667]

you can make them turn either way you want if you wrap around the post the other way

[Jim Comeaux]

They don’t if you know which way is up.

[Mark Hatcher]

I don't think you can compare a tuner to a screw. It's more of a crank and the way that is right is the way you are used to.
I use Knilling planetary tuning pegs on my crossovers and like regular wooden tuner pegs you are winding the string over the peg as you turn pulling the strings up tight. Since they are opposing each other in the open headstock configuration you are actually turning them in opposite directions.
This seems to be the most logical way but it takes some getting used to.
Now if you use wooden pegs coming up through a solid head you would still be turning them in opposite direction to keep them wound to the inside. So like I said, right is what you are used to

A guitar isn't a whole guitar until you attach a human to. Sometimes it's better to just train the human than get too fiddly with the mechanics of it.

[jschmitz54]

Sven and Ole were siding a barn. Sven working on one side of the barn and Ole on the other. Ole decided to go over and see how Sven was doing.
Sven was taking about every other nail and throwing it over his shoulder. Ole says Sven what the heck are you doing throwing all those nails away. Sven replied the head is on the wrong end of the nail.
Ole says Sven you idiot those are for the other side of the barn.

[RussellHawaii]

As Coyote says, you can choose the opposite winding, and find out why we don’t do it that way. I had an ukulele strung backwards, and besides being confusing because it’s not what we are used to, there is an objective reason.
The thumb is much stronger than the fingers. So tightening with the thumb is the way it’s designed.
This is my theory.

[JeremyG]

Originally Posted by jazzereh

Maybe this has been discussed someplace here and if so please direct me with a link.

In a normal world - construction, electrical, even twist ties - it would be 'normal' and expected that if you are tightening something, say a screw into a board or a wire onto a terminal, you turn it clockwise. Guitar tuners, to tighten, ie raise the pitch, of a string are turned counter clockwise.

I've wondered about this for a long time. Hasn't kept me up at night, yet, but figured I'd finally ask.

Why?

It's a rough life....

[donlyn]

Why do guitar tuners turn the wrong way?

Huhh?

They still tune the way they always have. Badly. ;-)

Now if they'd only stay in tune, this would be a moot question either way.

(Of course they could always be strung anyway you want to string them. And then let muscle memory take over. GLWT.)



Don
.

[donlyn]

Originally Posted by jschmitz54

Sven and Ole were siding a barn. Sven working on one side of the barn and Ole on the other. Ole decided to go over and see how Sven was doing.
Sven was taking about every other nail and throwing it over his shoulder. Ole says Sven what the heck are you doing throwing all those nails away. Sven replied the head is on the wrong end of the nail.
Ole says Sven you idiot those are for the other side of the barn.

Long time ago, say 60s or early 70s, one of my friends convinced another to help paint his house. The owner bought light blue paint for the shingles and dark blue for the trim. He said I'll start on this side and you do the other side. (It wasn't a big house; a bit on the smallish side.)
So he started with the light blue paint on the shingles. After about an hour or so, he went over to see how things were going.

The other guy was painting the shingles dark blue.

True story, for which many aphorisms come to mind.
Could even make up a few new ones.

And the time period probably had some relevance. ;-)
More like Cheech and Chong than the Three Stooges.

Don
.

[Alan Carruth]

'Righty tighty' for machine screws and wood screws is a convention; a standard that people settled on for whatever reason, which could just as easily have gone the other way. It's like driving on the right side of the road (most places) or (analog) clocks going 'clockwise'. As it happens there is no particular reason why you would expect guitar tuner buttons to follow that convention, and good reasons for them not to always do so.

Originally, guitars all had flat 'paddle' heads, and the tuners were tapered friction pegs that went through from the back side. To keep the head short they used three pegs on a side. To avoid interference the strings went from the nut slots to the inside side of the pegs except for the two outer strings. Those went to the outside of the tuner shafts so that the strings (which were gut and somewhat fragile in tight bends) didn't have to make a sharp corner of the nut to the tuner. Thus, looking from the back of the headstock, the high E, and low A and D strings, turned were 'righty-tighty' and the others were 'lefty-tighty'.

Lutes and violins used a slotted pegbox, with the tuner pegs going in from the sides. The strings had to wind onto the top of the pegs, so the ones on the bass side of the head were 'lefty' and the trebles side pegs were 'righty'.

Mechanical tuners started coming in around the early part of the 19th century. They settled on using worm gearing pretty early on, for the most part, and that meant that the tuner buttons were at a right angle to the rollers the strings wound onto. Partly to save weight (machines weigh more than pegs) they went to slotted heads, so the strings have to wind onto the tops of the rollers, as with lute and violin strings.

The roller bearings are the metal base plates, and the string tension pulls the rollers toward the nut. There has to be a little play in the roller holes, and that causes the gear to move a bit relative to the worm. If the worm is on the 'nut' side this pulls the gear out of alignment with the worm, and you get a lot of wear; the tuners get sloppy and eventually bind up. Thus the gear goes on the nut side. With that setup, using right handed thread on the worm gears would make normal Classical tuners all work 'righty'. For some reason, all of the Classical tuners I have in my shop have 'lefty' worms. Go figure. At least you don't have to remember to turn the E tuners 'backwards'.

The 'open' steel string tuners I have handy use the same 'lefty' worms, and the sealed gear ones turn in the same sense.

One would think that it would have been easier to use 'righty' worms, since that's the default way most screw machines are built, but the early makers did it the other way for whatever reason, and it stuck. If you reverse things people end up breaking lots of strings because they're 'backward'.

[bufflehead]

Originally Posted by jazzereh

In a normal world - construction, electrical, even twist ties - it would be 'normal' and expected that if you are tightening something, say a screw into a board or a wire onto a terminal, you turn it clockwise.

The so-called "normal world" tends to do things wrong. Think about it. Maybe guitar tuners are the only mechanisms getting it right?

[Bob Womack]

The first thing I thought when I saw the thread title:

Why do guitar tuners turn the wrong way?
And lovers await the break of day?
Why do they fall in love?



A velcro mind.

Bob

[robj144]

Originally Posted by Alan Carruth

'Righty tighty' for machine screws and wood screws is a convention; a standard that people settled on for whatever reason, which could just as easily have gone the other way. It's like driving on the right side of the road (most places) or (analog) clocks going 'clockwise'. As it happens there is no particular reason why you would expect guitar tuner buttons to follow that convention, and good reasons for them not to always do so.

Originally, guitars all had flat 'paddle' heads, and the tuners were tapered friction pegs that went through from the back side. To keep the head short they used three pegs on a side. To avoid interference the strings went from the nut slots to the inside side of the pegs except for the two outer strings. Those went to the outside of the tuner shafts so that the strings (which were gut and somewhat fragile in tight bends) didn't have to make a sharp corner of the nut to the tuner. Thus, looking from the back of the headstock, the high E, and low A and D strings, turned were 'righty-tighty' and the others were 'lefty-tighty'.

Lutes and violins used a slotted pegbox, with the tuner pegs going in from the sides. The strings had to wind onto the top of the pegs, so the ones on the bass side of the head were 'lefty' and the trebles side pegs were 'righty'.

Mechanical tuners started coming in around the early part of the 19th century. They settled on using worm gearing pretty early on, for the most part, and that meant that the tuner buttons were at a right angle to the rollers the strings wound onto. Partly to save weight (machines weigh more than pegs) they went to slotted heads, so the strings have to wind onto the tops of the rollers, as with lute and violin strings.

The roller bearings are the metal base plates, and the string tension pulls the rollers toward the nut. There has to be a little play in the roller holes, and that causes the gear to move a bit relative to the worm. If the worm is on the 'nut' side this pulls the gear out of alignment with the worm, and you get a lot of wear; the tuners get sloppy and eventually bind up. Thus the gear goes on the nut side. With that setup, using right handed thread on the worm gears would make normal Classical tuners all work 'righty'. For some reason, all of the Classical tuners I have in my shop have 'lefty' worms. Go figure. At least you don't have to remember to turn the E tuners 'backwards'.

The 'open' steel string tuners I have handy use the same 'lefty' worms, and the sealed gear ones turn in the same sense.

One would think that it would have been easier to use 'righty' worms, since that's the default way most screw machines are built, but the early makers did it the other way for whatever reason, and it stuck. If you reverse things people end up breaking lots of strings because they're 'backward'.

I believe "righty tighty" comes from the vector cross product and related to rotation in physics. In a right handed coordinate system, "crossing" a vector clockwise (X x Y for instance) produces a vector into the plane, which is the -z direction in the xy plane.