A mate of mine gave me an electric guitar, for nothing!

[Simon Barden]

Thomann in Germany have the black Steinberger ones in stock https://www.thomann.de/gb/steinberge...ner_set_bk.htm. But at £99+ postage, I personally wouldn't bother. The chrome ones are cheaper at £83, but won't be in stock for 'a few months' - if at all if they are stopping production.

There will be a lot of Gibson Firebirds that may become unplayable without serious modification in they have tuner issues then. My mate's son has a Firebird that's two years older then mine and has them (mine has standard Grovers). And one tuner on that felt very dodgy indeed.

Gibson do sell them, so you may be able to get them from Gibson direct (or a Gibson dealer) https://www.gibson.com/en-US/Gear/Tuning/PMMH-ST/Chrome. No indication they are discontinued.

But I'd probably fit Korean-made locking tuners if it was mine. Decent and do the job. But I'd try and sort that bridge out first otherwise it's not really wort doing much to it. But you've got two sets of holes to worry about, the string-through ones and the Graph tech Ghost saddle holes. Definitely looks from the holes for the GraphTech saddles that it was designed to sit further back with the saddles sitting further forwards and mostly covering the 'racetrack' holes.

Plug the existing string-through holes and redrill? Will look a bit messy from the rear, but at least it will work.

[DrNomis_44]

Thomann in Germany have the black Steinberger ones in stock https://www.thomann.de/gb/steinberge...ner_set_bk.htm. But at £99+ postage, I personally wouldn't bother. The chrome ones are cheaper at £83, but won't be in stock for 'a few months' - if at all if they are stopping production.

There will be a lot of Gibson Firebirds that may become unplayable without serious modification in they have tuner issues then. My mate's son has a Firebird that's two years older then mine and has them (mine has standard Grovers). And one tuner on that felt very dodgy indeed.

Gibson do sell them, so you may be able to get them from Gibson direct (or a Gibson dealer) https://www.gibson.com/en-US/Gear/Tuning/PMMH-ST/Chrome. No indication they are discontinued.

But I'd probably fit Korean-made locking tuners if it was mine. Decent and do the job. But I'd try and sort that bridge out first otherwise it's not really wort doing much to it. But you've got two sets of holes to worry about, the string-through ones and the Graph tech Ghost saddle holes. Definitely looks from the holes for the GraphTech saddles that it was designed to sit further back with the saddles sitting further forwards and mostly covering the 'racetrack' holes.

Plug the existing string-through holes and redrill? Will look a bit messy from the rear, but at least it will work.

With the bridge positioned where it is, the front-edges of the saddles are very close to where the scale-length ends up, the guitar uses Fender's 25.5 inch scale-length, I found this out by getting my 600mm steel ruler that also has inches marked on it, and I used my Fender Stratocaster to mark the spot where the middle of the 12th fret ends up on the ruler, next I used the ruler to do the same on the peavey's neck and the mark ended-up exactly in the middle of it's 12th fret.

Next, I got my roll of blue painter's tape and put some tape either side of the Peavey's bridge, and used my ruler to mark where the scale-length ends, turns-out I was right, with each of the string-saddles adjusted back as far as they could go against the back of the bridge-plate there was about 2mm or so between the end of the scale-length and the front-edge of the saddles, no wonder the strings always played sharp at the 12th fret, I'll post a pic here tomorrow so you can see what I mean, I have the intonation for each string on the Peavey adjusted as best I can, but the low E-string, and G-string (the worst offender) are both still reading sharp even though both are adjusted hard up against the back of the bridge, the high E-string seems close to perfect with the b-string, the D-string and A-string still a bit sharp.


I wonder what kind of finish Peavey used on these Generation EXP guitars, if they used a lacquer-based finish, maybe I could order some finish touch up from Stewmac that's compatible so I could cover-up any hole plugs to make them invisible, then I could easily fill-in the old holes and carefully drill new ones.

I'm convinced that the bridge being wrongly placed is a mistake that occurred while the guitar was being manufactured, and my guess is that someone didn't pick it up during their Q.C. inspection, so a huge batch of these guitars were made with the same manufacturing mistake....well, my theory anyway.


I did notice that if all the string-saddles were adjusted so that they covered the racetrack holes, then each string would play horribly sharp at the 12th fret.


Here's my understanding of correct bridge positioning with regards to good intonation adjustment, the bridge needs to be positioned so that the scale length can be easily lengthened in order to compensate for the string-tuning's tendency to go sharp when the string is fretted at the 12th fret due to the increased tension on the string, you should never have to shorten the string so it is shorter than the scale-length in order to compensate, unless the bridge is too far back from where it should be, or there's some issue with fret-placement, or the neck has a twist or some other fault.

[DrNomis_44]

Thomann in Germany have the black Steinberger ones in stock https://www.thomann.de/gb/steinberge...ner_set_bk.htm. But at £99+ postage, I personally wouldn't bother. The chrome ones are cheaper at £83, but won't be in stock for 'a few months' - if at all if they are stopping production.

There will be a lot of Gibson Firebirds that may become unplayable without serious modification in they have tuner issues then. My mate's son has a Firebird that's two years older then mine and has them (mine has standard Grovers). And one tuner on that felt very dodgy indeed.

Gibson do sell them, so you may be able to get them from Gibson direct (or a Gibson dealer) https://www.gibson.com/en-US/Gear/Tuning/PMMH-ST/Chrome. No indication they are discontinued.

But I'd probably fit Korean-made locking tuners if it was mine. Decent and do the job. But I'd try and sort that bridge out first otherwise it's not really wort doing much to it. But you've got two sets of holes to worry about, the string-through ones and the Graph tech Ghost saddle holes. Definitely looks from the holes for the GraphTech saddles that it was designed to sit further back with the saddles sitting further forwards and mostly covering the 'racetrack' holes.

Plug the existing string-through holes and redrill? Will look a bit messy from the rear, but at least it will work.

Interestingly enough, Gibson state that those Steinberger Gearless Tuners require no modifications to be made to the guitar in order to install them, but that's actually a lie, you need to drill a small hole for the short locating pin near each of the larger tuner mounting holes, on the front of the guitar headstock, which marrs the finish of the guitar.