Help! Issue with Schaller M6 Locking Tuners

[simonjr]

Hi everyone,

I got an EBMM St Vincent recently and it's wonderful. But I've just run into an issue when trying to restring: after removing the old strings (detune, unclamp the locks, remove string etc), I've now found that the 4 interior string clamps (A, D, G, B strings) are fully clamped and don't change at all with the rotation of the rear thumbscrews. I've managed to change both the E strings fine, so I cannot work out why this has happened; I removed all 6 strings in exactly the same way, and I didn't have to yank the strings out, they all came out freely. I've tried unscrewing/rescrewing the clamps all the way to see if that fixed it and it didn't.

Can anyone help? This is stressing me out quite a bit as I own other guitars with locking tuners and have never run into this issue before.

EDIT: Problem solved! The clamps were just seized in place, I was able to loosen them by sticking a pin through the string hole which then let me push the strings through. I guess I'll leave this post here with the solution in case anyone else ever runs into this problem.

 

[DrKev]

That can happen with many brands of locking tuner. When taking a string out, after releasing the thumbscrew give the string a wiggle before pulling it back through the hole usually prevents it. On the rare occasions that it does stick a short off cut from the A string or low E string is all that's required to get it to release.