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When you have several instruments across your bench in a day, winding strings gets pretty old. Personally, I’ve not yet found the ideal peg winder.

I have at least 3 hand cranks — none of them is well suited to all knob styles. The Shubb is the least expensive, but it has a decent pin puller so gets used a lot. I also have an Ernie Ball power thingy, but for a power winder, it’s annoyingly slow.

Someday I’ll spring for a class winder by Frank Ford, but meanwhile I’d really like to find a good power winder setup.

Suggestions?


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The Planet Waves Turbo Tune head can be taken off and put at the end of a drill, giving you variable speed to a reasonable pace for your needs.

https://www.daddario.com/products/acces ... eg-winder/

Not slow. Care must be used, but great.

Pat

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Pat

Not currently in production but they do tend to come back every few years - turbotune. They come with a winder but we're busting strings all day and a drill is way easier, faster AND more versatile for us with creative winding when appropriate.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

I have one of Frank's cranks..... Worth every penny!

For what it's worth.... I would never touch a customer's instrument with one of those things chucked in a drill.....

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

In fact, I have a couple of 1/4” hex drive “heads” like that, but have yet to find an ideal driver to fit them on. I guess I should expand the question, as the best solution is likely to be some head + driver combination.


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Holy smokes, Hesh, I can’t believe you use a brute like that. Like Brian, I’m awfully shy to bring a full-size cordless near an instrument.
If I’m going to use a power assist, I want it light and not over-powered. The Ernie Ball thing is a nice format, very light and not powerful, but painfully slow. There’s a simple B&D 4V rechargeable at the Big Orange, but I have no experience with it.


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This suits me perfectly. Not the cheapest tool but it works well. I used one at work for years to remove and reinstall bazillions of 6-32 and 4-40 screws on electronic assemblies. The clutch can be dialed down to super light and the low speed setting is just right. Because of the low speed and the low settings available on the clutch and with the correct Phillips bit (#0 or #00?) it also works very well, IMO, for removing and reinstalling pickguard screws. However, I do not use it on tuner screws.

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Steve Smith
"Music is what feelings sound like"

I only do string changes occasionally, but my lovely daughter (brooklynlutherie.com) gave me a Frank's Crank in curly maple for Christmas a few years ago and I find it fun and very easy to use

Ed

Why not?

Pat

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Pat

The turbotune adapter fits so very well and is already safed to never damage a peg head that it works flawlessly. It's very fast too much faster than cranking.

Dave and I have used these exclusively on every guitar we've worked on for the past nearly 13 years now. We've never had any damage result, none. That's around 15,000 guitars and does not include the ones we did not accept for repair but may have slacked the strings to examine something.

It's a huge time saver too in so much as I can bust strings off a guitar in well under a minute and at my age with some joint stiffness happening it's much appreciated that I'm not manually turning anything.

We are not the only pros who use these and again no damage nor have I ever heard of any damage from any of the countless Luthiers that we know. I would also argue that trying to turn a crank and hold the adapter on a tuner and off the peg head sounds far more damage prone to me than our drills and turbotunes.

Lastly and this is important we only work on a guitar or instrument when it's chucked in our leg vices. Consider that when using a drill and turbotune in so much as the guitar is stationary and fixed making the drill the only variable in terms of unintended movement. Very safe AND over the course of a day it saves me a lot of time too.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

This is my fave. My old finger joints just don't have that many tunings left so gotta conserve! I always hated turning tuners anyway.

This Black and Decker - BDCS30, weighs 12 oz compared to 64 oz in the Makita Drill/Driver solely for comparison (love it otherwise).

Plus basically palm size, no sharp edges, RPM 180 max, and kinda low 35 in lb torque. (Still enough to break strings!)

I find the 180 RPM about perfect. It is a dedicated tuning tool in my shop and been working 3-4 yrs already. Around $25.

The tuner adapter is widely available. Can you smell the paduak?

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Brian R, Wood Mechanic
N8ZED

First I've fixed to many headstocks damaged by these gizmos. Not that you cannot mar a head with a hand crank but the extra torque and speed make it much more likely. Same reason I do not use a screw gun to run in PG screws etc. So is the 5 minutes you saved worth a $100 head refinish?

And I do not believe every job requires a power tool.... I run a religious 3 wraps around a tuner peg. The average tuner is 14:1 so that's 42 turns per key..... I can do the job faster by hand than the time it takes to get my drill, put a bit in it and then crank at roughly the same speed.....waste of time and energy to me. And quite seriously, how many string changes etc do you do? I could do maybe 8 full set ups in a day max! If that amount of labor to wind strings is killing you then maybe this isn't this for you.

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Funny just yesterday I grabbed one of my cheap plastic winders and was trying to remember when I bought it. It must have been 25 years ago, seriously. I stuffed the head full of masking tape so that it would pad it out and would not scratch the sides of head stocks.

Well yeah, I guess you have to be careful, like any other tool. I did rub a little on the edge of a guitar a few years ago. It had open tuners that were small and possibly set in more than normal. Lesson learned. Other than that I’ve used it on many hundreds of guitars and it’s one of those tools that puts a smile on my face every time I use it. I keep it mounted right under my set a bench with the tuning key always in.

I used to have a little Metabo 4.8 volt that was just about perfect in power, speed, size. This PC has really nice balance though and the reverse button is very conveniently located, and sometimes I do use that speed.

I always wanted to try one of those electric screwdriver’s that came out that Adjusted the speed and direction by how much you tilted it. Has anyone ever tried one of those?


Pat

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Pat

I have all three Frank's cranks and so glad I got them. They are some of the best money I have spent on tools for my shop.

I use a 12v Milwaukee, slightly bigger than the B&D Brian has upthread. Life's too short to wind up classical strings by hand!

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

We've never damaged a peg head with our turbo tuners and again we are talking about tens of thousands of guitars served almost as many as McDonalds.

Dave and I bill at a rate of about $200 an hour. We are busier than ever and as such although we will never and have never compromised quality when we got more successful we will never endanger the valuable personal property of others. We would not be successful had this not been the case...

I would suggest that when you see something that you don't understand or that is not in your experience please consider not being immediately critical of it and wrong in your position. Lots of shops use chucked tuners in drills it's not uncommon at all.

Since we have had to get more efficient because of our volume how we work and what we use to do our work is important to us. With my turbo tuner chucked in my drill I can bust the strings off a Martin in seconds, spit out the turbo tuner and replace it with my Stew Mac reamer, pull the end pin, ream the sucker for a K&K and then put the drill down. I've now done two operations with the same tool, the drill in my hand. A typical K&K install takes us 15 minutes or less because of how we work.

In our experience hand cracks are far more likely to damage a guitar with user error since you are trying to hold it in contact with the tuner, hold it straight, and then turn the thing over and over again. With a drill it's like my Sonicare tooth brush I only have to hold it in place.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Just for the heck of it on my last Stew Mac order I got one of their Waverly winders.

https://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tools/T ... gJvGvD_BwE

I have to say that's a fine piece of work there. I like how the head has two slots for mando's and guitars alike.