is there a reason?

[player]

Any one care to explain why Electric guitars are normally tuned up with the tuners away from the nut and Acoustics are three one way and three the other?my nephew(25) and I talked about it beats him too,is it some kind of protocol or what?

[pes_laul]

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://www.americansongwriter.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/fender_buddy-miller-acoustic.jpg&imgrefurl=http://www.americansongwriter.com/2009/06/fender-acoustic-buddy-miller-signature-guitar/&usg=__3xAQ6JtP1m2KcQoLvdE-bjzROAk=&h=1153&w=430&sz=49&hl=en&start=0&zoom=0&tbnid=8XMr2-TwdGNLOM:&tbnh=150&tbnw=56&prev=/images%3Fq%3Dfender%2Bacoustic%26hl%3Den%26biw%3D1 680%26bih%3D949%26gbv%3D2%26tbs%3Disch:1&itbs=1&iact=hc&vpx=627&vpy=267&dur=8254&hovh=150&hovw=56&tx=71&ty=105&ei=Q2QZTYfrL8OC8gbOmtiJCg&oei=Q2QZTYfrL8OC8gbOmtiJCg&esq=1&page=1&ndsp=37&ved=1t:429,r:3,s:0
I dont know to me they just look kinda weird

[deeaa]

That would be because of good ol' Leo...

Leo Fender was VERY cost-effective in _everything_ he planned for his guitars.

Every single detail of the basic Fender is designed to be as cheap and simply functional as possible.

For instance, he himself said the woods were carefully though out to be the cheapest and least resonant ones (he believed the deader the body on an electric the better as it would help fight feedback which was a major problem back then). If there had been thick plywood readily available he'd have used it for sure.

He went for in-line tuners simply because that way you need only one type of tuner as opposed to having to build two different types and keep them sorted.

If you pick up an original-style tele or strat and compare it with a Gibson for instance, you quickly realize on a Gibson there was no thought of how much it would cost to make molds and such for bridge parts, how much more complex the parts are, and all the bindings and such...whereas in the Fender even the neck is just one single piece of wood that could be semi-automatically milled to near finished dimensions in a matter of seconds from ready-sized wood blocks, the bridge is made of standard sheet metal just pressed to form, or in a Tele the saddles are just standard size grooved bar, etc. etc...

Leo was truly the Henry Ford of guitars, and being that, he simultaneously and quite unintentionally set the standards for much of the electric guitar conventions today. He really was a genius engineer, but still I've always been amazed how little improvements have been made to the original designs.

[Eric]

That would be because of good ol' Leo...

Leo Fender was VERY cost-effective in _everything_ he planned for his guitars.

Every single detail of the basic Fender is designed to be as cheap and simply functional as possible.

For instance, he himself said the woods were carefully though out to be the cheapest and least resonant ones (he believed the deader the body on an electric the better as it would help fight feedback which was a major problem back then). If there had been thick plywood readily available he'd have used it for sure.

He went for in-line tuners simply because that way you need only one type of tuner as opposed to having to build two different types and keep them sorted.

If you pick up an original-style tele or strat and compare it with a Gibson for instance, you quickly realize on a Gibson there was no thought of how much it would cost to make molds and such for bridge parts, how much more complex the parts are, and all the bindings and such...whereas in the Fender even the neck is just one single piece of wood that could be semi-automatically milled to near finished dimensions in a matter of seconds from ready-sized wood blocks, the bridge is made of standard sheet metal just pressed to form, or in a Tele the saddles are just standard size grooved bar, etc. etc...

Leo was truly the Henry Ford of guitars, and being that, he simultaneously and quite unintentionally set the standards for much of the electric guitar conventions today. He really was a genius engineer, but still I've always been amazed how little improvements have been made to the original designs.
That's very interesting stuff. Stories like that invariably make me wonder which guitars out there would represent the culmination of the technology we've acquired over the years in between then and now, without trying to be vintage. You know, what would be the latest, greatest guitar with the best-designed bridge and neck and what not?

[deeaa]

That's very interesting stuff. Stories like that invariably make me wonder which guitars out there would represent the culmination of the technology we've acquired over the years in between then and now, without trying to be vintage. You know, what would be the latest, greatest guitar with the best-designed bridge and neck and what not?

I really don't know if such a thing can exist given matters of taste, but it does seem to me there's very little to improve on guitars like Parker Fly or some top-end Ibanez or Jackson etc. shredders...Flaxwood is also one pretty ingenious one...but, it's always bound to me more of a search for what _you_ like than search for perfection. The same as in cars. Not everyone can afford or even want a top-end Mercedes, although few would contest them being pretty much the best there is in regular cars. Not to mention Ferraris etc...stuff built for very specific use.

But yeah, as far as guitar evolution, just for instance Parker & Ibanez both have stuff in their genres I really don't know if that can be improved on on any easily measurable terms. Or maybe Steinberg made the ultimate carbon fibre necked ones...matters of taste.

[poodlesrule]

I may have said this before (I think): if an engineering student would submit the Strat trem as a new design in a school project, he would get funny looks.

Has the convention stayed set for so long because it was convenient to keep it simple (=cheap) to make?

Any instances of "luxury" Strat-type trem ever made?

[tunghaichuan]

Any instances of "luxury" Strat-type trem ever
made?

I believe that Floyd Rose and Kahler trems are examples of this.

[NWBasser]

That's very interesting stuff. Stories like that invariably make me wonder which guitars out there would represent the culmination of the technology we've acquired over the years in between then and now, without trying to be vintage. You know, what would be the latest, greatest guitar with the best-designed bridge and neck and what not?

The new Gibson Firebird-X...:poke

[deeaa]

The new Gibson Firebird-X...:poke

While that made me laugh...it well might be. But with those prices it'll stay an attempt at one I'm afraid...

[player]

to borrow the sig line by spud '' does anyone read the original post'' appears I have an gotcha here

[Eric]

to borrow the sig line by spud '' does anyone read the original post'' appears I have an gotcha here
Fair point. On that note, was your original question answered by deeaa? Seemed like a plausible explanation to me.

[player]

Fair point. On that note, was your original question answered by deeaa? Seemed like a plausible explanation to me.in two words not really but on another board this is Eric.

They're all counter-clockwise to tighten, no matter which side of the peghead they're on. You're always rotating your hand the same way to tighten a string... on any guitar.

As far as what side of the peghead they're on, that's a design element - there's no functional reason.

[deeaa]

in two words not really but on another board this is Eric.

They're all counter-clockwise to tighten, no matter which side of the peghead they're on. You're always rotating your hand the same way to tighten a string... on any guitar.

As far as what side of the peghead they're on, that's a design element - there's no functional reason.

Well thanks for dismissing my reply completely and replacing it with your erroneus judgement. Why do you ask in the first place if you are going to dismiss the answers?

There are indeed at least two functional elements: 1. making just one kind of tuner instead of left/right hand rotating is cheaper and saves time also in construction/storage and 2. with in-line setup you can get the strings to stay in a perfectly straight line over the nut&minimize friction at the nut, which is harder to achieve with two-sided design. Incidentally, the straight/no friction design of both the headstock and the bridge where there is no separate angled bridge but all in one piece are by far the largest contributors how a Fender sounds as opposed to any guitar with angled string passes over nut/bridge.

[Eric]

Well thanks for dismissing my reply completely and replacing it with your erroneus judgement. Why do you ask in the first place if you are going to dismiss the answers?
:rotflmao: :beer:

[sunvalleylaw]

There's never been any reason . . .

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Sorry Player, couldn't help it. I passed over the subject line several times, but then I got sucked in by my free associational mind. Enjoy! :dance

[wingsdad]

Actually, I was kinda baffled by the original question because it seems to assume all electric guitars are strung 6-a-side...

...Any instances of "luxury" Strat-type trem ever made?
Not while Leo owned Fender, but CBS-Fender departed from the original, standard Stratocaster bridge & trem design for the first time in 1980 when it introduced the first 'factory hot-rodded' model, The STRAT. Although still a 6-pivot system with the option to use as many as 5 springs under the hood, the bridge saddles and trem block on this model were cast of heavy brass for producing radically more sustain than ever:
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b81/wingsdad/STRAT/IMG_0320c.jpg
This guitar was worked hard for 5 years, and the saddles show it, but unlike most of today's today's import or USA guitar 'gold finished' hardware, the gold held up because it's coated in 22K 100-micron gold electroplate. BTW: the pup polepieces, pg screws, trem arm (except for the cap) and the tuners were never gold on this guitar. It's one of the earliest-made from '80-'81 , rushed to market before all the gold parts were ready.

A tinkerer til the day he died, Leo ultimately outdid his original 6-pivot design himself when he came up with the G&L Dual Fulcrum Vibrato (http://www.glguitars.com/features/DF-vibrato.asp).

[player]

Actually, I was kinda baffled by the original question because it seems to assume all electric guitars are strung 6-a-side...

Not while Leo owned Fender, but CBS-Fender departed from the original, standard Stratocaster bridge & trem design for the first time in 1980 when it introduced the first 'factory hot-rodded' model, The STRAT. Although still a 6-pivot system with the option to use as many as 5 springs under the hood, the bridge saddles and trem block on this model were cast of heavy brass for producing radically more sustain than ever:
http://i17.photobucket.com/albums/b81/wingsdad/STRAT/IMG_0320c.jpg
This guitar was worked hard for 5 years, and the saddles show it, but unlike most of today's today's import or USA guitar 'gold finished' hardware, the gold held up because it's coated in 22K 100-micron gold electroplate. BTW: the pup polepieces, pg screws, trem arm (except for the cap) and the tuners were never gold on this guitar. It's one of the earliest-made from '80-'81 , rushed to market before all the gold parts were ready.

A tinkerer til the day he died, Leo ultimately outdid his original 6-pivot design himself when he came up with the G&L Dual Fulcrum Vibrato (http://www.glguitars.com/features/DF-vibrato.asp).Actually wingsdad I know there are some big name electrics not strung 6 inline.a book about George and Leo says so.my Fender is obviously not one off them it is inline.nice G&L btw.on another forum the same question was posted.to date I've received no less than the half dozen replies about it and yes Leo did in fact come up with this concept.Both the Book(bio) and that(F) forum say the Fender Broadcaster was the first to incorporate his idea.few others followed.I was just curious about the why because several other players and at least one luthier did not know.one player was my nephew that just looked at me and said he did not see why it would not work aside from having to have top notch tuning machines and pegs that clearly not all guitars have.add to that the centuries old practice of 3l+3r we see Leo was in fact years ahead of his time in pulling it off.heard a rumor some Gibson Electrics are still tuned that way.last one I had wasn't but that means nothing in the big picture.

[wingsdad]

....nice G&L btw.
If yo mean my link to the G&L site's section on Leo's Dual Fulcrum trem system is to show Leo's version of a 'luxury' trem for a strat, thnx. If you mean the pictured guitar in my post, it's not. It's to show an example of the first 'luxury' strat trem system on a factory-issue Fender stratocaster. But it's not a Leo Fender design. He'd sold the company to CBS 13 years earlier and they were trying to fix what they'd screwed up corporately with the Stratocaster by bringing back some pre-BS design elements like the smaller '62-ish headstock, 4-bolt neck and truss-rod adjustment at the base, and adding some new technology like a hot-rod bridge pup and 9-way switching. They also managed to turn it into an 11-lb boat anchor.


... add to that the centuries old practice of 3l+3r we see Leo was in fact years ahead of his time in pulling it off. ...
While I've been as big a fan of Leo's (and Fullerton's) genius as anyone for quite a long time, he didn't actually invent 6-inline tuner design. CF Martin beat him to it by almost 100 years with an acoustic guitar in the 1850's, and even Leo and George would admit they stole the 6-in line solid body 6-string idea for the Broadcaster/NoCaster/Telecaster and later the Stratocaster's headstock design from fellow Californian Paul Bigsby (yeah...same guy who invented the vibrato unit that bears his name) who custom made guitars Country pickers, most notably Merle Travis.

...heard a rumor some Gibson Electrics are still tuned that way.last one I had wasn't but that means nothing in the big picture.
I must be missing something in translation, player. From your opening post I thought you meant the 3 left tuners are wound counter clockwise and 3 right clockwise. Is that what you mean?

[player]

I must be missing something in translation, player. From your opening post I thought you meant the 3 left tuners are wound counter clockwise and 3 right clockwise. Is that what you mean?[/QUOTE]Yes,sorry about the thread nemocracy but 3 + 3 on many electrics still exsist and Thanks for all the other info who'd a thought Martin and Bigsby pulled it of before Leo and company.

[markb]

Wingsdad has it right about 6 in line headstocks. The Martin design was borrowed from Austrian Stauffer (http://www.12fret.com/new/Martin_Stauffer_175th_Anniversary_pg.html) guitars where CF Martin I learnt his trade. The machines on those C19th guitars were little more than clock keys. Paul Bigsby did indeed design a headstock startlingly similar to that of the strat in the 40s. Here's a pic of Merle Travis (http://www.myspace.com/retrofretvintageguitars/photos/3275599#{%22ImageId%22%3A3275599}) with his D28 sporting its replacement Bigsby maple neck.