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New tuning pegs for electric violin

Posted on December 20, 2009 | Filed Under Instruments 

Recently Chris, worship musician extraordinaire at our church came to me and asked if i could replace the tuning pegs on his electric violin to guitar tuners. He said that he wanted more control in tuning, I said sure.

During research I learned that guitar tuners wouldn’t work, however I discovered Perfection Planetary Violin Pegs at Musiciansfriend for $69.00. These gems fit the bill to a T. I immediately ordered a set.

Three days later this arrived.

After reading through the instructions I learned that I needed a new tool, a standard tuning peghole reamer. I found that at Stewart-MacDonald for $49.98. The next thing to have on hand was some Gorilla Glue, then the fun could begin.

The first step is remove strings and old tuning pegs, being careful to note the order of the strings and bag them for safekeeping. Next I had to sort the new pegs between the treble and the bass side of the violin, because they actually screw in and the threads are reversed on the treble side.

Now with the peghole reamer I carefully removed a little wood from the holes checking for fit after a couple turns. Very little wood actually needed removed, be very careful because you can’t put the wood back once it is removed. The pegs should fit very tight when screwed in place.

I did this for each tuning peg, cut and size for fit. I numbered each of the pegs to remember exactly which hole it was being fit, because in the next steps the pegs have to be trimmed in length. The peg head of the violin is tapered.

Now its time to trim the length off the pegs. I used a pencil to mark the excess end on the pegs approximately 2mm outside the peg head per the instructions. Then using a very fine modelers saw I cut the ends off each peg.

I then sanded the ends to smooth them up using 220, 400, then 600 grit progressively putting a slight rounding on them.

Now it’s time for final fit and then gluing. The instructions say to slightly moisten the holes with wet Q-tip, put a small bead of Gorilla Glue on the threads of the pegs and final install. I used a rubber band wrapped around the barrel of the peg to get a good grip when screwing them in.

All finished, let the glue dry overnight and restring.

Thanks Chris for the confidence in me to work on your expensive violin and for the challenge in this project.

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