Locking Nut vs. Locking Tuners

[ryanb]

Does anybody have experience with using a traditional nut and locking tuners instead of a locking nut on a trem or floating-trem guitar?

I have seen various threads dance around this question. Trem saddles can be adjusted (within reason) using shims to get the right radius. Locking nuts seem to offer far fewer choices for radius, and there's no shimming trick to fix the nut radius. Locking tuners might be an option, but I haven't used them, and am somewhat skeptical about how well they really hold.

Any thoughts?

[whatshisname]

They work reasonably well. I had a Blazer, with a Wilkinson trem, graphite nut, and locking tuners, and it held it's tune fairly well. I could do full dive bombs, and still be in tune, most of the time. Not nearly as well as a full locking system.

I also had a Strat, with Schaller Floyd, roller nut, and locking tuners. It didn't hold it's tuning as well as the Wilkinson did.

You also have to worry about the strings popping up out of the nut, when you do crazy divebombs.

I've also used a few other guitars with locking tuners, and my verdict is that while they work, nothing is as reliable as a locking nut/trem combination.

[JTM45]

I think locking-tuners are great for use on hard-tail guitars. I've got a set of Sperzels on a guitar with a tunomatic bridge and they're fantastic on that.

As far as using them on a guitar with an Ibanez/Floyd type trem I just wouldn't consider it. There's no substitute for a locking-nut and I don't see why anybody wouldn't want one on a guitar that's got a fine-tunable trem system on it.

[Ironjose]

You also have to remember that strings tend to strech and thats where the locking nut is useful...

[PacificaJonny]

Locking tuners are good for none trem users and drop tunings, locking nut for trem users,

[knarfzednem]

actually i have a floyd eqipped Carvin with just the locking tuners. it has held tune better than any of my locking nut guitars, since day one. and i had to change the strings and adjust the trem angle when i first got it. maybe it's just me.

[JESTER700]

IME locking tuners and a slick nut are almost, but not quite, as stable as a locking nut. Definitely easier to deal with, but on my latest Carvin neck I got the locking tuners, and within a few months added a behind the nut lock.

[RSVampire]

I like em but after having my friend's Carvin guitar fail with it I do not intend on getting them. Only 1 year into the guitars life the tuner failed and locked up and wouldn't move at all. Carvin (being the fantasticlly, great and wonderful company they are) replaced the part in full including shipping. The crappy part to me was the fact that he was missing a string (d string to be exact) for like 10 days. After that experiance I'd rather not deal with the locking tuners and just deal with straight up regular tuners or a locking nut.

Taking out of account of the failure to the tuners... I'd say, from experiance, that the locking tuners are only suitable for Wilkinson or vintage style trems... a Floyd Rose bridge is just way overkill for that kind of stuff.

[PacificaJonny]

First: Locking Tuners are great for lazy people, The strings don't slip.
Second: Once the nuts locked, don't matter what happens regarding the string slipping, it's pretty much dead locked.
Third: Only use a locking nut with a floyd, no others
Fourth: Only use locking machine heads with Vintage trems and Fixed bridges
Regards
Jonny

[Randy G]

Unless, you can find those replacement fine tuner saddles that Samson used to make for Strat trems. Then a locking nut would be great with a Strat trem.