AG-1 perhaps i am Tony Iommi?

[ross.pearson]

Unless they are really, really rattly, tuners rarely allow any slip. I've had one set of tuners (on a min 1940s Regal parlour), where the tuners were so bad through wear they had to be replaced.

Slippage that bad is often a sign of the strings unwinding at the ball ends. This is quite a common occurrence on the top two plain strings, less so on the wound strings. Though sometimes the wrap or wound strings can sometimes lose its grip on the inner core and cause issues.

Thanks Simon and McCreed !

So it is the machining tolerance that creates a poor feel that in turn leads to the feeling / idea that they are no good.

That makes sense.

Ive found that with my older guitars that have kit tuners on them - the tuners get stiff and clunky with age but the fancier/more expensive tuners dont have that problem.
So that is to do with quality of machining on the internal gears?

OliSam, sorry about derailing your thread somewhat!

Simon, yeah you're right. The turning action on these tuners is still great, so not that I guess. I checked the tuning first thing this morning and it's a couple of cents over on every string almost uniformally, so I'm going to blame the humidity and temperature changes in this terribly non-insulated room we're living in. I'll do a string change at some point, even though these aren't even 12 months old yet! Practically brand new!