The Peghead Dwain Wilder

The earliest dulcimers seem to have had very simple tuning pins, similar to those you will see on pianos and hammer dulcimers today. Sometimes they were handmade wooden pegs. Handmade tapered tuning pegs were also used. After the dulcimer revival, various mechanical tuners came to be used. The question for the dulcimer owner is, how do you deal with tuners and pegs that are giving you trouble? Okay, here we go:

Metal tuning pins: These are rare in dulcimers being built today, and I do not have much experience with them. Any hammer dulcimer builder will have plenty of experience dealing with them, however. If you are finding the pins do not hold tuning and there is no expert advice around, you might try a little Chair Lock. This is a liquid compound sold in hardware stores which swells wood. As its name implies, its intended use is to repair chair joints by swelling the wood so it locks the joint. Go sparingly with this stuff because it really works. You don't want to douse the tuning pin's hole and then find the pin frozen!

Handmade wooden pegs--homemade: If your dulcimer has handmade wooden pegs that are not holding, I'm afraid you might have little recourse to replacing them. Unfortunately a lot of people have installed homemade wooden pegs into folk music instruments who just don't know how to do it properly.

To be a reliable joint there has to be a carefully made match between the surfaces of the peg and the hole, with just the right amount of taper to encourage proper seating. If these surfaces don't match accurately, the peg will work for a while but not long. If you can see any evidence of tool marks, knife cuts, or any lack of a smooth, even surface on the peg, all is lost! Replace the pegs with well-made pegs or install mechanical tuners.

If the pegs seem to be competently made and just need some attention, see the next section.

Handmade wooden pegs--luthier-made: Properly made pegs, properly installed, will last for decades and give very good service. After all, players of violin and viola family instruments have used them for hundreds of years. There are some tricks of the trade, however, that make life a lot easier:

Fine Tuners: If your dulcimer has wooden pegs, you really should have some kind of fine tuner arrangement. Life is so much more enjoyable. These may be little wooden beads on the string between the saddle and the end of the tailpiece or one of a number of little screw arrangements. If you need fine tuners, show your instrument to your favorite luthier or repair person and see if something can be arranged.

Peg conditioners: There are various peg compounds designed to alter the friction of the peg. These are either lubricants or sticky substances. Sometimes a compound will be both, believe it or not. Peg dopes, soaps, and ointments are well-known to violinists and violin repair people. Ask for their favorite. In my shop, I use Hidersine's "Hiderpaste" and Ardsley Musical's "Peg Drops Peg Compound." Ardsley is in Scarsdale, NY--(914) 693-6639. Hidersine Co., Ltd is in London, England.

Resizing: One of the fine points of peg installation is to achieve a sensuous, comely end of the peg, so that the end of the shaft just barely protrudes from the outside of the peghead. But if enough material has been left on the peg shaft to allow it, a repair person may be able to gently resize the peg and/or its hole to give it a better seat.

Replacement: Finally, the peg is meant to be easily replaced, after all. If you are enjoying your instrument and its pegs but one is beginning to be a pain, consider having the instrument re-fitted with new pegs. Get a luthier who really knows this business well, and prepare to spend more than you expected. Well-made pegs properly fitted are not a "poor-man's" alternative to the real thing. This is an art and a craft, and a considerable expense.

Caspari Pegs: Several styles of adjustable friction pegs are available on the market. Here's a run-down:

Caspari: These European pegs look very much like conventional wooden pegs, but they have a built-in clutch to control the peg from slipping. This clutch can be controlled with an adjustment screw in the end of the peg's handle. These are often installed in beginner's violins and violas and are very finely crafted from rosewood. Except for occasional adjustment of the clutch, they should be trouble-free. Adjust so the peg is just barely holding the tension of the string without slipping. Properly adjusted, the peg should turn readily, easily, and smoothly to tighten or loosen the string. The instrument fitted with Caspari pegs is often also fitted with fine tuners, to allow quicker tuning.

Shaller: This is a plastic knock-off of the Caspari peg. I have seen them advertised in Steward-MacDonald (the Home Depot of luthiers), but have no direct experience with them. Within the limits of their materials and quality of engineering, they should perform more easily than wooden pegs.

Grover: These are very low-cost mechanical pegs that rely on a friction clutch. The clutch is composed of a screw adjustment which squeezes two fiber washers against the inner and outer wall of the peghead. In other words, the wood of your instrument is being used for a clutch. Many luthiers (including, most emphatically, myself!) think this is a bad idea and would like to put Grover out of their misery for ever thinking the contraption up.

Nevertheless, if you have them, you have them. Just avoid over-tightening them, since any excess will cause more wearing away of the wood of your peghead. If a time comes when they won't hold at all, try taking them off and looking for glazing in the washers or the wood where they have been bearing. Gently breaking up the glazed surface with a nail file can help. After the fiber washers are gone, you may be able to find a source for another set. Somewhere.

Mechanical tuners: There are basically three styles of tuning mechanisms in use. There are many brands, each with its own assets, problems, and features, so we can't cover them all in detail. But there are some general precautions we can take to keep them in good health.

Ganged Guitar tuners: Guitar tuners are all variants of screw-and-worm mechanisms. Ganged tuners means they are mounted on a common base. This is good for keeping them in alignment and providing a larger foundation for withstanding the large torque generated at the end of the shaft by the string tension. There is often a very large gear ratio, sometimes 17:1, which allows easy, precise--but slow--adjustment of tuning. There are little cranks available that fit over the handle and speed up the process of winding new strings up to tension. If you do a lot of changing strings, you might consider getting one of these.

From time to time, inspect the screws which hold the long platform onto your dulcimer. Don't let those get loose or all sorts of bad juju will ensue. Also, inspect the screw which hold the string shaft onto its gear. Don't let that one get loose--same bad ensuing juju, only worse. And lastly, keep the mechanism cleaned and well-oiled. No one has ever explained how you keep a mechanism both well-oiled and clean, considering the world is 83% cat hair and 17% static electricity. The best of these mechanisms have little covers that guard against cat hair, egg-laying spiders, and other disgusting conditions.

Non-Ganged Guitar tuners: You guessed it. The same as ganged, but less so. Treat these with the same respect, only more so. Since they don't have the advantage of a large foundation, they are a little more susceptible to being yanked around by string tension. They are built for the life they lead, but nevertheless deserve your respect and care.

Banjo tuners: Banjo tuners are bizarre little beasties with tiny planetary gear mechanisms inside. The main benefit of this: the handles stick out in the same line as the peg's shaft and the gear ratio is 4:1 or 5:1 instead of 17:1 (so they operate much faster). Some people like the design much better on the dulcimer than guitar tuners (me, for instance). There is a tension adjustment screw in the end of the handle. Tighten that if your tuner won't hold a tune.

One thing banjo tuners are susceptible to is an esoteric malady I call "sun gear shaft failure." Inside the mechanism, there is one gear--the sun gear--fastened to the end of the shaft you turn. That gear's shaft is pressed into a slightly under-sized hole in the handle shaft (which you twist to adjust the string's tension). Sun gear shaft failure means that gear's shaft has broken out of the handle shaft, so that turning the handle doesn't tighten the peg anymore. Fatal failure. It's usually covered under warrantee unless you've been doing unnatural acts with the thing.

Dwain Wilder is a luthier in Rochester, New York. Do you have comments or questions about his article? Contact Mr. Wilder directly by e-mail. To learn more about him, see the Contributors section of Sweet Music Index.