09/12/2025
Ahhh, the luthiers knot. A cute way to “lock” your strings around the tuner post. It’s not necessary in most cases. Let me tell you why.
Almost all modern style tuners feature tapered posts shaped like an hour glass. Fat at the top and bottom, skinny in the middle. Strung with the conventional one wrap over one wrap under method, the hour glass shape combined with the tension of a tuned string, squeezes the windes together rendering it “locked”.
The occasions when lock wrapping strings makes sense would be on a vintage style kluson tuner that was manufactured with a straight tuner post.
My biggest gripe is how useless the strings become after kinking them up at the post. Say the strings have to come off at some point during set up. The lock wrapped, kinked up strings will work but they’ll be hellishly annoying. And good luck reusing them if your guitar is outfitted with a tremolo.
Your tuners are tapered for a reason.
