Nylon strings without a slot head.

[Ron Ellison]

Is it possible to have a nylon strung guitar without using a slot head. And also, I suppose, without using friction pegs as as well?

[Greg Mirken]

Have a look at these ingenious geared pegs. Available for flamenco guitar or even ukulele.

http://pegheds.com/index.htm

[Doug T]

I used these on a classical I finished about 6 month ago.  They are awesome pegs, smooth, and hold tune remarkably well.  If I remember correctly, the set is 120 bucks.

[Mark Pollock]

The Goya GA-17 uses regular ol' steel string tuners, and they work fine. (The only one of these I've seen is owned by John McCrea of CAKE.)

[Magnus Hultin]

John McCreas Goya is a GG-12, it was recently displayed in the April issue of Acoustic Guitar Magazine. This was one of a few models made by Levin Guitars of Sweden to be played with either steel or nylon strings. Most of these had slotted heads and classical bridge but a few, like the Goya GG12, were solid heads.

 

I seen no good reason why a nylon sting guitar couldn´t have a solid head with normal geared tuners. It looks a bit awkward but it works equally good.

[Pierre-Antoine Roiron]

Thanks Greg for this link. Very intersting.

[Kerry Krishna]

Believe it or not, those violin pegs were installed at the Collings factory on a steel string guitar last year. They looked amazing in the photos....

[Ron Ellison]

Thanks for your replies. I was hoping that regular tuners would work. Any thoughts about the gearing?

[Tim Mace]

The Gibson wideneck folk guitar of the 60's(owned one til' stolen in the 60's)had steel string tuners.Action is/may be/ different for nylon......

[Paul Hostetter]

Sure, they'll work fine. Because of the smaller shaft, you'll have to turn the buttons more times per incremental rise in pitch. And by the time you get the string up to pitch, you'll have wound quite a bit of string around that post, because of the smaller rollers typical of steelstring tuners. So when you start the string, you need to pull it pretty close to straight before you start turning, to avoid the big bundle of nylon around the post. Try it and you'll see what I mean. If you still wind up with too much string, detune and start over again.

 

The 4:1 Peghed machines are really sweet, but I sense they're not really called for in your situation. Any good tuner will work fine.