This project isn't nearly the magnitude of the other ones on this site, but it's a good opportunity to present a how-to on changing a guitar's tuners. Steph and I bought the Schecter Blackjack used earlier this year. One of the few things that I didn't like about the guitar from the start was the tuners. They weren't awful per se, but they felt a little different from what I'm used to, and I wanted to try some locking tuners out (both my current project guitars will have locking tuners, but they aren't up and running just yet). I found a set of chrome 3x3 Planet Waves auto-trim locking tuners on ebay for a lot less than their retail price, so I went ahead and got them.
Based on my experience with the Q guitar and John's experience with the blue JM, I figured these tuners would be bigger than the existing holes in the peg head and that I would need to drill. Given that fact, I waited until I would have access to a drill to take the strings off the guitar. Today I happen to be at my parents' house where I have access to a drill. Much to my surprise when I popped off the first Grover tuner the Planet Waves tuner popped right into the hole nearly perfectly. Happily I will not have to drill the Schecter, which I was a little nervous about.
Step 1: Get a nice workspace and lay out the tools and materials. My tools will be a screw driver, a string winder, a new set of strings, a tuner, and a leatherman.
Step 2: Remove strings from guitar either by unwinding or clipping with the leatherman. (Process not shown).
Step 3: Remove original Grover tuners.
Step 4: Place new tuners in slots and screw them in. These particular tuners have small pokers that imbed in the wood. I guess they are for stability, but they make a small gap between the tuner and the body. I pressed them in as much as I felt comfortable doing without breaking something.
Step 5: Tighten down washers and nuts on top and admire.
Step 6: Unscrew locking mechanism on the bottom. Put guitar string through opening. Clamp down locking mechanism. Turn peg until auto-trim mechanism catches. Watch the slack snip away like magic.
Step 7: Repeat for all strings. Tune up and play guitar!
Step 8: Have high e string slip out of locking tuner while tuning the guitar up. Get doubly frustrated when remaining slack of string is auto-trimmed off, leaving you with nothing to work with. Try various fixes all of which ultimately fail. Flip off guitar in frustration.
Step 9: Replace original high e string with additional slack. String will hold, for now.
As you can tell by step 8, this little adventure wasn't all joyous and carefree. I think the tuners were an older set, because they look a little different from the ones that I bought new for the Q guitar. The good news is that the strings appear to hold fine when given a nice wind from plenty of slack. It says right on the box that a lot of slack shouldn't be needed. Liars. For the record, the strings were 0.10's. I normally use 0.11's, but the Schecter came with a few free sets of 0.10's and it's set up for them already and plays like butter. The other good news is that I didn't drill anything and I can go back to the Grovers at any time if I need to. It's mildly disappointing that the product did not perform as advertised, but it could have been much worse. I look forward to trying other brands of locking tuners in the future.
Oh, I almost forgot. I was mildy concerned about extra headstock weight from the tuners, but the guitar doesn't feel any different to me so far. I think these tuners are only slightly heavier than other brands of locking tuners (I compared them to Schallers) and the impact on the Schecter is not big.