Locking Guitar Nuts:

aussieteacherPMMD · Post by **aussieteacherPMMD** » Fri Jul 30, 2010 12:56 am

I noticed Olly recently stated that his electric has a lockable nut, which set me to wondering if they are possibly more common in some countries rather than others..I remember in the mid 90's they were all the rage here on new models, with most electric brands featuring at least one or two guitars which had lockable nuts, and in principal the concept seemed a great idea. While I never owned one, the feed-back I got from students was that they worked as they were designed to do, but in practice in most cases still didn't hold a tuning properly, and made changing a set of strings, something which many busy guitarists do every week or two, a major undertaking. Most students who had them ended up taking them off and throwing them away.
Since the late '90's, they have not appeared in any wholesalers product listing I have seen here, and of the fifty or so students guitars I have seen every week since then I've never seen a one...neither have I seen them in stock in any music store..in fact, I had forgotten they existed until Olly's comment.
Are they still in use in the UK?

Post by **olly** » Fri Jul 30, 2010 6:37 am

I own a couple of guitars with them. I think they are common amongst any guitars with a floating tremelo system. Both guitars I own that have locking nuts do have the flloyd rose floating tremelo.

Because you can use the tremelo to such extremes, without the locking nut the tuning would suffer immensly. I can slacken the strings completely and it comes back to perfect tune.

I have found the system ver good though does add a bit of time restringing, especially when you first get used to it!

aussieteacherPMMD · Post by **aussieteacherPMMD** » Fri Jul 30, 2010 6:50 am

Yeah, I imagine it would.
The Flloyd Rose connection hadn't occured to me, but it makes sense.

polyal · Post by **polyal** » Sat Jul 31, 2010 2:37 pm

i use the floyd rose system but the bridge is rock solid ( no tremolo )...tune up
and it will stay in tune until the temp changes ( outside gigs / hot pubs etc ).. and.. using the boss tu
results in a perfectly tuned git in seconds...even when you cant here yourself think for
a blasting disco

the main point is... you dont muck about with the machine heads to get it in tune
and as far as string changes go (breakage)...if you're gigging take a spare git
you can always restring inbetween sessions

edit: i think the floyd rose setup and a boss TU2 tuner are the best thing since lobby and oatcakes (stoke on trent)

aussieteacherPMMD · Post by **aussieteacherPMMD** » Sat Jul 31, 2010 9:35 pm

Well, the stoke on trent reference sails right over my antipodean head, but if the oatcakes are anything like the ones my missus cooked up once, which seemed to be nothing but a lump of rolled oats cooked like a particulary nasy and tasteless piklet, I'm not missing much.
Floyd Rose set-ups seem to be thin on the ground now as well, here at least- I personaly have never been a big fan of them.

polyal · Post by **polyal** » Sun Aug 01, 2010 7:49 am

it seems like you've got your own version of 'oatcakes' ..but thats got to be for another forum

i 've got a strat with just the floyd bridge ( locked ) wouldn't swop it for anything.... the fast and
precise tuning (either up or down )i need this feature when gigging

lobby is a posh word for stew and must admit is a lot tastier than oatcake