PRS SE One - Tuner wisdom needed

Magnus

New Member
Joined
Aug 17, 2017
Messages
7
Location
Oslo, Norway
Hi there, all you wonderful people of PRS land!

I recently acquired a white PRS SE One. It was sitting there all alone, in my local guitar store here in Oslo, and i picked it up out of curiosity, and the thing just resonated to kingdom come.

I was blown away. In equal parts due to the guitar resonating like crazy, and to it's price tag. Mon dieu!

But now that the honeymoon is over, and we've gotten to learn one another a little better after a gig or two - it's time for some upgrades to make it a truly great guitar.

Mainly - the tuners need replacing. It's a Jr. style guitar, so intonation was never gonna be immaculate, but that makes the tuners all that more important... And the current ones have the precision, tightness and weight of a drunk orangutan.

So... Which tuners can you recommend as a drop-in replacement? I have Schaller M-6's on a my main guitar (A Music Man Axis SuperSport Semi-Hollow) and they are great. Precise and with a nice high gear ratio, and i would love something similar.

But, i hear a lot of raving about the Phase II tuners? Can they just be dropped in? And where does one buy them?

PRS land is all new to me, help me explore, and make your tuning preferences known. It would be of great help!

Thanks!
 
Congrats on your wise decision. SE One's Rock :cool: Schallers are a drop in replacement. You might also consider changing the nut. I haven't done either on my Ones but if this changes make your appreciation for the One even greater I'd say go for it.
 
The Mann keys are built on the stock tuners, so if you don't like stock those aren't the way to go.

I enjoyed the Grover 406 set. Nice locking mechanism, direct replacement, decent weight.

The Schallers will fit, but are heavy, which I'm not a fan of.

Phase II keys will fit, but require new holes for the stabilizing screws. Can be bought from John Mann or I suppose PRS Europe?

Intonation should be great regardless of tuners, unless you're using a wound G or strange or very light gauges.
 
The Mann keys are built on the stock tuners, so if you don't like stock those aren't the way to go.

I enjoyed the Grover 406 set. Nice locking mechanism, direct replacement, decent weight.

The Schallers will fit, but are heavy, which I'm not a fan of.

Phase II keys will fit, but require new holes for the stabilizing screws. Can be bought from John Mann or I suppose PRS Europe?

Intonation should be great regardless of tuners, unless you're using a wound G or strange or very light gauges.

Thank you for your input!

I really like (or have just gotten so used to) the Schaller M-6's on my main guitar, that they are properly my preference. But i'll look into the Grovers for sure. They main objective is getting a higher gear ratio for fine tuning.

About the intonation, the guitar intonates just fine with 11's, but with a stoptail bridge design you can't do a lot of fine adjustments to the intonation, so sometimes i like to compensate that when tuning by making e.g. the G-string 5 cents flat, so that it's better in tune when fretted. And getting 5 cents precision out of the current tuners is too much hard work. (First world problem, i know)

Sorry to be the buzzkill, but why fix it if it ain't broke?
The stock tuners & bridge work flawlessly on my One.
Just sayin'......

No buzz killed, don't worry :)

They're obviously not broke, they do a reasonable job of tensioning the string to my preferred pitch, but my main reason for replacing them is that i wan't a higher gear ratio. You see, my main guitar has Schaller M-6's on it, and going from those to the PRS ones is night and day, in terms of the ratio.

Now if i only ever played the SE One, then i'm sure that i would get used to the feel of the tuners, but right now they just annoy me every time i have to tune.
 
BTW, i swapped a Schaller M-6 from my main guitar onto the SE One, and i definitely fits... But the tuning peg(?) is considerably lower. Should that be a concern? I'm thinking string break angles etc.

Here's a picture:
https://ibb.co/nwjTuv
 
11's on the stock nut. IMHO impossible. Don't want to be a buzzkill either but the stock nuts are cut for 009's. I had/managed to widen the slots for 10's on all my Ones. Can't believe that u don't have issues without work on the nut. ;)
 
11's on the stock nut. IMHO impossible. Don't want to be a buzzkill either but the stock nuts are cut for 009's. I had/managed to widen the slots for 10's on all my Ones. Can't believe that u don't have issues without work on the nut. ;)

The guys at my local guitar store usually put 10's on 25,5 inch scales and 11's on anything below, so they might have done it for me? :p

Have a look, maybe you can spot something that i can't:

Pic 1: https://ibb.co/j8Cqra
Pic 1: https://ibb.co/gkGuHF
Pic 1: https://ibb.co/k4WTcF
 
About the intonation, the guitar intonates just fine with 11's, but with a stoptail bridge design you can't do a lot of fine adjustments to the intonation, so sometimes i like to compensate that when tuning by making e.g. the G-string 5 cents flat, so that it's better in tune when fretted. And getting 5 cents precision out of the current tuners is too much hard work.

11s have been on my One for a few years and my intonation is rock-solid. First, I went with the Grover 406s, which were great, but very tough to replace a string on a dark stage. Then came the Schaller M-6s. Heavy, yes, but solid and stable. Then I got some original PRS winged tuners! They don't have the high ratio that others have, but they work perfectly and keep in tune better than the other three sets of tuners. The last mod was to add a USA nut. That combination remains today and I frequently gig that guitar with delight. Completely pro-grade.
 
I went Phase III"s but they aren't drop in. Had to ream the holes. I also went Core nut, and a MannMade2300 bridge, and the big old cap on the pot. It was great the way it was, and it's even better now!
 
The guys at my local guitar store usually put 10's on 25,5 inch scales and 11's on anything below, so they might have done it for me? :p

The only flaw I can find on a One is the cheap nut. And without some work done to it you would'nt manage to drop 11's into the slots. That was the purpose of my comment. If I look at the pictures I see that the area close to the nut has some paintchips. My guess is that it's a replacement nut. So no worries on that part.:D
 
11's on the stock nut. IMHO impossible. Don't want to be a buzzkill either but the stock nuts are cut for 009's. I had/managed to widen the slots for 10's on all my Ones. Can't believe that u don't have issues without work on the nut. ;)


Your comment rang a little bell in my brain, and so i swapped the 11's - that were on it when i bought it - with a set of 10's. And whoopsie daisy... All the tuning problems suddenly went away.

The strings were definitively catching on the nut... I can't believe i didn't think of that.

I think you just might have saved me some money ! :D
 
The members on this forum will help you with a lot of things. Beware they are all enablers that will eventually make you buy another PRS and another one and on and on :rolleyes:. So for now you save money. :cool:
 
Seems like a great forum indeed!

And i like enablers. As long as they enable me buy nice things. Like PRS guitars ;)

(I'll smooth things over with my bank later)
 
Hi there, all you wonderful people of PRS land!

I recently acquired a white PRS SE One. It was sitting there all alone, in my local guitar store here in Oslo, and i picked it up out of curiosity, and the thing just resonated to kingdom come.

I was blown away. In equal parts due to the guitar resonating like crazy, and to it's price tag. Mon dieu!

It's not an accident. So, it would be good to start at the beginning:

"Paul wrote the Rules of Tone over many years after a conversation he had with his father about physics. Essentially, it is a list of 21 rules of instrument making that are particular to PRS and the way we build guitars. The document is now locked away, and serves as a private record of PRS trade secrets written down to ensure that Paul’s philosophies and discoveries are never lost or forgotten....."



 
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