
The best way to try them is to ask a colleague in your orchestra who has gear pegs to let you take them for a test drive. With Wittner Finetune pegs you don't push in at all. So most Perfection Peg (and PegHeds) users will push in just a little as they tune. They still won't slip, but they just feel wrong. Perfection Pegs have a feature where you can change somewhat the "tightness" of how they feel by pushing in on them, and if you don't push in at all, over time they can work their way out to where they feel very loose. Once you get the hang of it, which takes maybe a dozen tunings, you'll rarely have to draw up twice. Turn down (toward lower pitch) at the start to release the nut-groove static friction, and then draw up. But the mechanism intrinsically is not incremental, as far as I know.Īll these problems are alleviated by just getting used to geared pegs and understanding that they function differently toward the same end.

If you bear down very hard on the gear peg (for instance, because that's what you're used to doing with a friction peg), then you can cause it to grind a little against itself which can feel a bit like it's turning in increments. One never experiences that with a traditional peg because the static friction of the peg itself is always much greater. If there is any jerk in the motion, it is only if you start by drawing toward higher pitch, which I believe is due to the release of static friction of the string against the nut groove. I had a couple of older violins (peg holes worn over the years before I got them but not needing a rebushing) and an relatively new electric violin that required larger sized diameter(mm) shafts. One caveat is that the geared pegs (shafts) do come in different diameters(mm) beyond standard so measure your current pegs.
#Wittner finetune pegs install#
I liked them so much that I got a peg reamer and learned to install them myself and now have them on all my violins and, to be honest, unless I tell my fellow players they are none the wiser. Love at first tune! And the pegs pretty much stayed in position despite weather or humidity. Not the greatest violin but decently adequate for the jobs at hand. Argggg! So I eventually bought a violin that came with the geared pegs already installed from the factory for gigs such as this. It started for me when I was playing a gig (in the winter) and at a break, left my "good" violin on a table that was too near an uninsulated window (duh) and when I returned, three of the pegs had sprung. Sorry to all the luthiers out there, but as a player, they just are. Traditional pegs seem always to be a hassle even when they are exceptionally done. "Geared pegs" all the way as in the ones that look like traditional pegs with the gears inside the peg.Discussion: Questions about peg re-bushing.Discussion: Why not install Planetary Pegs?.

Laurie's Violin School: Don't Tolerate Impossible Pegs!.
#Wittner finetune pegs free#
So here is the question: Do you favor traditional, wooden friction pegs for your instrument(s), or do you favor the pegs containing small mechanical gears inside, known informally as "gear pegs?" Please feel free to describe your peg experiences and recommendations in the comments below! (And by the way, thanks to Paul Deck for the Weekend Vote idea! If you have ideas, feel free to e-mail me!) That is right, after all that difficulty, the traditional pegs on my violin, or on just about anyone's, are a breeze for me.īut why all the suffering? As Elizabeth said, "It takes the strength of a butterfly to turn these pegs!" I gave my blessing to several of my students to get the geared pegs, and they certainly have no trouble tuning their instruments. Having grown up with mismatched, constantly-slipping pegs in my violin that required constant struggle, I came to view myself as kind of a peg warrior. Gear pegs contain small mechanical gears inside, making them very easy to turn and less likely to slip.

To explain: traditional wooden pegs use friction to stay in place.
