Educate me on the EVH D Tuna

[Matt300ZXT]

I've been fascinated by this device forever and never owned one. I mostly have Floyd based guitars and it could be useful on 1 or 2 since I'm going to be playing live again and switching back and forth between some drop D and standard turning (well, half a step down) and if I have one guitar I'm really clicking with that night, it'd be nice to have a D Tuna or two so I could just mostly play that 1 guitar all night. 2 of my guitars have an Original Floyd Rose, one has a Gotoh Floyd Rose (which I much prefer), and one is one of those late 00s USA Charvels with the Floyd Rose 1000 or whatever. 1 OFR is setup fully floating where as the other OFR and the other guitars have the Floyd surface mounted so very little to no space to pull up. Even on the routed guitar, I rarely pull up on it. Hell, I rarely even divebomb the guitars to be honest.

Anywho, are there some dos and don'ts to using one of these as far as tuning stability goes?

 

[itsme]

It's a nice little tool that does work great for live use. It's quick and gets close enough in tuning that a crowd won't notice. But if you want perfect tuning in both drop D and standard, you'll be disappointed. If you get it in perfect tune in drop D, standard will be off a hair and vice versa. I chose to tune to an exact standard tuning as that's what I use most, and deal with the minor off-ness in drop D. But at a gig I don't notice any tuning issue. Only at home when I'm alone.

 

[romanianreaper]

It's a nice little tool that does work great for live use. It's quick and gets close enough in tuning that a crowd won't notice. But if you want perfect tuning in both drop D and standard, you'll be disappointed. If you get it in perfect tune in drop D, standard will be off a hair and vice versa. I chose to tune to an exact standard tuning as that's what I use most, and deal with the minor off-ness in drop D. But at a gig I don't notice any tuning issue. Only at home when I'm alone.

I know this can be fixed but I have experienced the same problem with mine. I know there is some trick to getting both to match up, otherwise it wouldn't be as popular as it is. On my old guitar it worked great. Cool and easy to use

 

[Matt300ZXT]

Does it install on any Floyd variant that uses the OFR style baseplate and long skinny saddle locking bolt? The Gotoh has an angled tip on the end of the baseplate under the fine tuners, I'm curious if it'll work on that too?

 

[thenine]

You will need to block your Floyd or adjust it for dive bomb only. No pull up allowed on d-tuna

 

[Briman24]

If your floyd is blocked for dive only, your tuning will be perfect if you set it up properly. I have 12 guitars with them on.

Unlock your nut. Pull out dtuna so it's in drop mode. Tune all strings. Lock the nut. Push dtuna back in. Now use the fine screw on dtuna to tune it to e standard and voila.

 

[itsme]

If your floyd is blocked for dive only, your tuning will be perfect if you set it up properly. I have 12 guitars with them on.

Unlock your nut. Pull out dtuna so it's in drop mode. Tune all strings. Lock the nut. Push dtuna back in. Now use the fine screw on dtuna to tune it to e standard and voila.

You're lucky, this is exactly how I set mine up and none of them are perfectly in tune both ways. Even the factory new Peavey Wolfgang I bought back in the 90's. I must have bad luck...

 

[Briman24]

Try tightening your springs a little. Check your nut blocks don't have grooves in them and are tight enough. Also make sure your bridge is level with the body. Also check nut height.

 

[Matt300ZXT]

Do you think using this in Eb with 9-42s would be TOO slack for going to drop d now and then or should I stick with 10s for just a lil extra tension to help with tuning stability? Also, what tremolo blockers do you guys like to use? I remember the Tremol-no from back in the day, but FU Tone or whatever they are called has one they call the black box or something like that. This may be a good time to pick up some of those new quieter springs these Floyd upgrade places are selling these days so I can get all kinds of new toys.

 

[Briman24]

You can 9's or 10's no prob. Just adjust your spring tension accordingly. I block mine with these in pic. Not expensive and work well.

 

[Matt300ZXT]

I made a post similar to this over on TGP. I have come across a couple other designs as well. FU Tone has 2 different designs, Floyd Upgrades sells the Trem-endus and Ola demoed another product I found on Youtube today but it's like $109 or something ridiculous. I've seen the one you pictured before. I kinda dig the price of the ESP one that is also sold as the Trem-endus as it's $20, about half the price of FU Tones black box, but looks to do the exact same thing.