Fender Vintage Style Tuners

Next up on the restringing bench is a Fender guitar with vintage style tuners. These tuners have a vertical hole for the string that goes down inside the tuner, unlike the horizontal one on the modern style tuners, meaning a different approach is needed.

Summary: What is a vintage style tuner

Unlike modern style tuning pegs, where you pass the string through a circular hole, horizontally through the peg, vintage tuners have a hole in the top of the peg that you feed the string down. It's a fairly subtle difference, but does mean a different approach is required. These tuners look something like this:

Summary: Different Bridges

Another thing to bear in mind is that this guitar has a different bridge to the previous one we looked at. This is a Tune-o-matic style bridge, a type of 'hard-tail' or 'fixed' bridge commonly found on Gibson style guitars. Another guitar that commonly has a fixed bridge is the Telecaster (although not usually a Tune-o-matic!). The other main type is a 'Tremolo' style bridge, commonly found on Stratocasters. Make sure you have identified which type of bridge you have (bearing in mind these are the main 2 types and there are a lot of others out there!):

Tremolo style bridge

Hardtail style bridge

Checklist: Changing Strings

With vintage tuners, there is a slightly different process, as shown below:

• 1. Pull the string through the bridge and up through the tuning pegs. Make sure it is nice and taut.
• 2. Allow roughly three tuners length of extra string after the tuning peg. Cut off the remaining string.
• 3. Feed the string downwards into the tuner and then pull back around.
• 4. Start winding the string whilst still keeping the tension to get a good wrap around the peg.
• 5. Cut the excess string with a pair of wire cutters.