Preston tuners or machines (also known as peacock, fan, or watchkey tuners) is a type of

machine head A machine head (also referred to as a tuning machine, tuner, or gear head) is a geared apparatus for tuning stringed musical instruments by adjusting string tension. Machine heads are used on mandolins, guitars, double basses and others, and ar ...

tuning system for string instruments, named for English

cittern The cittern or cithren ( Fr. ''cistre'', It. ''cetra'', Ger. ''Cister,'' Sp. ''cistro, cedra, cítola'') is a stringed instrument dating from the Renaissance. Modern scholars debate its exact history, but it is generally accepted that it is d ...

( English guitar) maker John Preston and developed in the 18th century. -- ''the peg-box of the usual type is replaced by Preston's 'machine' ... frontal type tuning end fastening; looped ends of strings attached to movable hooks.'' Preston claimed to be the inventor of this design, though scholars note the originator could be the luthier John Frederick Hintz, who advertised such a mechanism as early as 1766. The tuning mechanism was also used on the German cittern known as the

waldzither The waldzither (german: "forest zither") is a plucked string instrument from Germany that came up around 1900 in Thuringia. It is a type of cittern that has nine steel strings in five courses. Different types of waldzither come in different tuni ...

, and is associated with the early-20th-century instruments built by C. H. Böhm. This type of tuner is almost obsolete, but is still used for the

Portuguese guitar The Portuguese guitar or Portuguese guitarra ( pt, guitarra portuguesa, ) is a plucked string instrument with twelve steel strings, strung in six courses of two strings. It is one of the few musical instruments that still uses watch-key or Presto ...

, itself historically closely related to the English guitar. The 18th-century incarnation of the design in England arranged the tuning bolts and hooks parallel with each other. 19th-century Portuguese luthiers developed the current fan arrangement to accommodate the extra 2 strings with the octave doubling of the lower courses and narrower fingerboard width; the English instrument had two single strings instead and a slightly wider fingerboard.

References

String instrument construction Guitar parts and accessories Portuguese musical instruments {{guitar-stub