Quote Originally Posted by Robert
Good tuners sure help! The cheapos that come with these 1-200 dollar guitars are usually pretty sketchy. My MK is so-so in this regard. Could definitely be better.
Question about this: I know people complain about bad tuners a lot, and I have some on a $100 guitar that are not smooth at all, but how does this affect tuning stability?

What I thought was if the nut is bad it can pinch the strings, and string bends while playing would pull the slack string through the nut, right? There is a similar phenomenon with the slack around the tuning pegs, which is why locking tuners are good, yes?

My question is about tuners -- do the tuners themselves actually rotate while you play, causing the guitar to de-tune? Other than the things mentioned above (pinching nut, wound string slack being tightened), I can't think of anything else that would make tuners affect the tuning stability of a guitar.

If the tuners do rotate while playing, that's quite odd, and even more odd that the non-smooth tuners are the ones that are less stable.