Schaller locking tuners warning

[D1m3b4g]

I genuinely sympathise with this post. I've built guitars and had them built for me for 20 years. I usually go with Gotoh locking tuners as I favour Ibanez / Strat style guitars and I've never had an issue with them. I've been fault finding a set of Fishman pickups on a Daemoness I've had built. To mess with the pickups I had to take the strings off, ToM bridge, easy enough. Did what I needed to do with the pickups and went to restring - but can't. The Schaller tuners are "stuck" in the locked position with the pin/ball internally at the top of the machine head. All of them. Can't get a single string back into the machinehads and no amount of loosening. shoving, tapping or anything seems to do anything. Guitar is dead.

Schaller locking tuners are genuinely terrible and it seems fairly clear to me, having used plenty of others that actually work they have a design flaw.
Before I can proceed with diagnosing the pickup issue I'm taking these pieces of utter crap off the guitar, throwing them in the bin (garbage to US folk) and changing them something else.

It may not have happened to you, and good for you, but it's happened to the OP & me and appears a valid issue - I can not restring my guitar.

 

[Bob Hoover Ross]

As someone who has a brand new set of Schaller locking tuners ready to go on my next Warmoth guitar (well, they were brand new ~18 months ago when I bought them, but right now they're sitting in the original box in a closet, along w/ the Warmoth neck and body and all the other parts) I've been following this thread with interest.

I don't doubt that OP (and the most recent P, above) have genuinely had the issues they describe and would concede that they're not necessarily (or definitively) due to user-error...the symptoms remind me of the recurring problems I had with old LSR Linear Pull locking tuners (ball gets stuck up in the locked position, can't remove or install a new string, much teeth-gnashing ensues...)

So as a purely band-aid solution, I'm wondering: Can't these Schaller locking tuners be used as conventional non-locking tuners, simply by just not engaging the locking mechanism? On a guitar with a hardtail bridge (no whammy) is their any downside to using the Schallers this way?

 

[Cagey]

Yes, you can, and no, there's not.

I have seen that happen before, just not with Schallers. But I'll just reiterate - I've used a bajillion of those things without issue, so if I were you I wouldn't lose any sleep over it. If it becomes an issue with one of them for whatever reason, a small jewelers screwdriver or a brad or something relatively inflexible can be used to coerce the ball down from the string entry side of the post, then just use the tuner as if it were a non-locker.

Something to keep in mind is that depending on the string's diameter/pitch, it only needs from 11 to 17 pounds of pressure on it to hold it in place, so you don't need to take a pair of vice grips to the knurled locking nut. Finger tight is plenty.

 

[TBurst Std]

I run into this at times.  The tool to use is a dental pick.  On sale at Harbor Freight you can pick up 5-6 qty set with different angles for a couple dollars.