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I am planning to build abt 5 flamenco guitars in the near future.I have 5 roughed out neck blanks.I tapered and drilled a set of ebony viola pegs to accomadate one flamenco neck .My question, have any of you tried the planetary pegs on a classical or flamenco gtr. ? If so , do you feel their worth the 120$ price tag or have you gone back to traditional friction fit wooden pegs or high quality set of tuners? If you did buy them, who would you recommend purchasing them from . Thanks.

I have used them once, I have never had ordinary wood pegs except on an old ukulele and that was not inspiring.
They work great, I did have a problem with one slipping until I cleaned some white substance off the mating taper.
I'd use them again. They work and the light weight is great
Probably buy them straight from the maker Chuck Herrin, Pegheds.com

I've used them on both classical and flamenco guitars and never had a problem with them. I wouldn't even consider wooden pegs. There's a few pics here. They let you do things that you can't do with slot heads, like straight through string pulls.

Chuck has changed the styling recently and some models are not now available. Check with Chuck on what is current.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

I haven't used the pegheds, just the friction pegs. I find that very few people actually have a clue about how to use them. So, for that reason alone I'd recommend the pegheds, especially if you are planning on selling these guitars.

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It baffles me why people are so averse to using a simple wooden peg. I guess that they haven't got a clue on how to fit them correctly or use them. They are simple and function perfectly adequately. I've had the Pegheads too and actually prefer the wooden type.

Pretty much the same reason the majority of people use cars not horses, hot water on tap rather than boiling a billy over a wood fire, email rather than pigeons. If someone can build a guitar, I can't see that fitting pegs would be over-challenging for them. Ultimately, the player chooses and the jury is in.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Sadly I think your analogies are rather short of the mark. We are referring to tuning Nylon strings to a reasonably specific pitch. I can point to a whole host of musicians who use friction pegs - including some Flamenco Guitarists, virtually the whole Lute world and a very large chunk of the world's Symphony orchestras. Incidentally, those who are doing it in Symphony Orchestras have to be extremely accurate in their tuning - they also manage to tune just using one hand.
You obviously have little experience when it comes to Friction Pegs. You might be surprised at the number of people who can make perfectly acceptable instruments and yet skimp on the correct fitting of friction Pegs.

I've installed several sets of planetary pegs and I would only recommend them for home use, not stage/professional. They randomly refuse to jam it properly so they can't be precisely tuned or not even able to hold the pitch. You might not notice it when you play with them a few days before shipping the guitar.

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I haven't had that problem on Planetary Pegs but I've had the odd one which seemed more difficult to turn than the others. I know that you have to pull the head back to free them a little but the odd one does seem to stick more than the others.
BTW Ernie if you opt for wooden Pegs make sure you fit the peg shaver to your particular Reamer. Too many people fit the Pegs without shaving them first. Also test if Peg paste is required. Certain wood combinations require Peg paste, others not.

Sorry. Didn't realise you were the only one with "the knowledge". Didn't mean to offend.
Maybe I've been lucky. I have a few pro players using planetary pegs, without problems. If they weren't doing the job, I'd be one of the first to know. I have planetary pegs on two of my own guitars. Six years on they're still working fine. As ever, YMMV.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

Didn/t mean to get this topic into a squabble.Reason I asked is I have fit over 100 violin /viola/ cello pegs without a problem.I still have a huge stock of vln family pegs.I was wondering if the pegheds were worth the extra cost.I can see the advantages of using both.Being a frugal luthier I hesitate to spend $$on something that might work better ,guess I will give it a go.

It's obviously not that I'm the only one with 'the knowledge' as you sarcastically referred to it Trevor. I used to work in a repair department that did all manner of early musical instruments, most of those instruments were fitted with friction Pegs. Unfortunately the number of 'cases' where the Pegs had been ill fitted was high. That's where friction pegs get a bad press. It's also obvious that they function perfectly well for Nylon/Gut strung instruments - as evidenced by my examples. This isn't going back to the dark ages. It's simply a means to a very simple end.

I have used the Peg Heads brand of mechanical pegs and I find them to work quite well. They retrofit well so you could always opt to use wooden pegs and then if your customer chooses can upgrade to a mechanical peg. It certainly would help keep the cost down.

I had no idea this was such a touchy subject. Personally I like the traditional look of pegs but that's about it, I like the modern mechanical advantage of Peg Heads.

I used 4 sets, bought over more than 1y and from different batches so it wasn't just an accidentally poor batch. 2 for a customer, 1 for another, 4th I kept aside for a guitar I had planed for me. In time both customers started to complain (one came for slotting and machines) at which point I plugged the slots on an old guitar and installed the unused set. After a while I noticed it too. A peg or another would start to feel rubbery when tuning. You could even see the tip rotating by itself under string tension. No matter how hard I would press it in, it would still not hold well. The next day it would work again, and next week another peg would start acting. Most of the time they worked great but when it happened it was very frustrating and I can only imagine how my customer felt when it did this on the stage.

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Since I have never used a planetary pegs will not comment.I will definitely second michael n/s opinion on ill fitting wooden pegs .When I ran a vln/gtr shop in L.A. I came across quite a few ill fitting vln/vla/cello pegs.Part of the problem is lack of communication between the customer an repair person. I had to constantly explain how to adjust the standard ebony peg, without wallowing out the hole in the peghead.Furthermore whenever we had a dry santa ana wind blowing through so cal, all the vln family instruments in the shop would unravel. Here in the midewest, the pegs unravel in the dead of winter when humidity drops to 30 % or less, from apr to nov it is ususally over 50% so no problems with ebony pegs .I/m gusssing that even with the new an improved planetary pegs that fluctuations in dryness and humidity will affect changes in a way that planetary pegs could possibly cause movement with these shifts .I/m gussing here, , thats why I asked for the feedback.

Exactly!

It's not that people "haven't got a clue how to use" a fountain pen that Bics get used.

That's interesting Alexandru. I've used the 9mm exclusively in new guitars and the 7mm (now discontinued, apparently) when replacing pegs in Condes. Which model were you having problems with?

The bodies are aluminium (OK, aluminum) and the tapered peg part which seats in the Al body, is a reinforced plastic composite. Pretty well immune to humidity changes. Not been a problem here between RH 25% and RH 95%.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

You could fit the traditional wooden pegs and leave the other two choices as an option. The good quality machine tuners are the easiest to use but would be the least traditional looking.

When you know how to tune with a Friction peg, it's faster. Actually it can be quite a bit faster. Like I said, this isn't going back to the dark ages . . . or fountain Pens for that matter.

I used 8mm pegs, both the old style with a short thread and the new with a long thread.

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Hmm... Remind me to steer clear of the 8mm ones! . I just had a look at Chuck's "catalogue". Hard to tell, but the 8mm ones look like they have less body taper (i.e closer to cylindrical). Maybe that's the issue.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

The first time I used Peg Heads the threaded fit was so good I just left it as that, after a while the g-string tuner was slipping. A dab of glue on the threads solved that issue. I think they are supposed to be installed with glue so that there is no 'friction' fit as it were.

This is not about the whole casing moving. Mine were so well glued in that I had to destroy some of them to take them out. I used a 1/10 reamer that fitted their shape perfectly. The newer ones are made to standard violin taper.

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Before I ever used them on a guitar I thought I'd better figure out a way of getting them out if I needed to. I glue them in with Titebond, used sparingly. This seems to act mainly as a thread former than a glue. To get them out, pass an old steel A or E wound string through the hole and wrap it around the string post, opposite way from "normal". Use a pair of pliers to grab the wound string over the post (the string protects the post from being damaged by the pliers) and apply torque to both the string post and the grip. I tried this a few times on a dummy headstock and got the pegs out without damaging them.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

I had a bit of fish glue on the thread, that's all. Mot of them went out with little effort (pliers and leather) but 2 would not budge until I discarded the leather (tried several sorts) and had the teeth bite into the alu.

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Trev thanks for the heads up abt the alum /composite nature of the pegs , and the 9mm gtr peg.good advice.Was only speculating that there might be some humidity issues with wood in the( peghed),having never seen one or used one before .Will try a set of the 9mm and see how they work.