PRS (Vintage) locking tuners

[Dan87]

Hi all.

I've ordered up a set of locking tuners for my 594 Thinline. They are the official PRS ones with the thumb wheel at the top for locking the strings in place.

I went for them for the simple reason of making strings changes quick and easy. I know many are quite happy with winding their strings onto regular old tuners but I'm so used to locking tuners on other guitars and I love the convenience

My question is this: what's the best way to restring with these tuners? There seems to be a bit of debate on the interwebs. The official PRS video guide clearly shows that you should allow approx 2 fingers worth of slack before tightening the thumb screw and winding the string around the post, pretty much like a normal non locking tuners.

Other videos show the string being pulled through the post, locking down and tuning up like every other locking tuner. So what do you folks suggest is best? In my mind option 1 makes the point of swapping out for the locking tuners a bit redundant in my case.

Cheers, Dan

 

[DISTORT6]

Either way is fine. This is how it looks on one of my guitars -

 

[xxxadixxx]

I second @DISTORT6 . I followed the PRS video with the 2 finger heuristic and end up with less than a full wrap on the post like he shows in his picture.

 

[Vic6string]

I just got a new CE and it was perfectly in tune out of the box and has stayed perfectly in tune with me playing the hell out of it and messing with the whammy much more than I normally would. Assuming they did the two finger method (which I am sure they did since their quality control is so tight) here's what it looks like (a far cry from my old non-locking tuners on my first guitar that usually had string winding all the way up the shaft):

 

[SinSir]

Leaving a little slack in the string for a bit of wrap isn't really the same as non locking tuners. With non lockers you wrap the wire a certain way to use the string to lock.

 

[bodia]

I pull through, tightly, and lock.

 

[Alnus Rubra]

I pull through, tightly, and lock.

^this^