It’s astonishing how a little tiny fraction of fretboard length in front of the nut or a tiny fraction of an inch of the bridge mounts or saddles can completely ruin an attempt to record two instruments together. So what’s the point of this review? The most important part of tuning for recordings is getting the temperament and sweetening of a guitar’s innate tuning JUST RIGHT so different instruments can play nice together in the same piece of music. I’ve gone from all Grover modern to trying a HUGE number of locking tuner brands and models to tailpiece and nut adjustments. I’ve been tinkering with tuners and tuning in my recording studio for more than a decade now. This isn’t a ding specifically on Grover! It has to do with small tuners with low tuning ratios in cramped spaces.

The ratio is too low, they’re too close together, and the tiny buttons don’t have a lot of smooth travel to get micro adjustments. As much as Grovers have meant to me for the past 4 decades, even the little Mini Grovers on 6 inline headstocks or 12-string headstocks can be a real hassle to tune just right. In addition, not all guitars (even not all super-well-made guitars and basses) intonate properly or are even easy to tune. On the other hand, once one starts recording multiple tracks with the same instrument over a period of an evening, the tuning drift can be quite annoying, as the creative process becomes all about re-tuning and re-playing. If one records a one-take solo, some wiggle room can be OK for a recording – a guitar can drift a bit in its tuning during the recording as long it is not drastic or irritating. One of the things that is very important to me as an artist is tuning. It’s part of my life force: create express make impressions of sounds with lots of different tools and instruments. I record music with a dizzying array of instruments almost every day of the year.

The Schaller Fine-Tuning Stopbar Tailpiece Upgrade Tuning Masterpiece on a Budget!

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