My Gibson SG is one of those that came with the eTune system which died some time ago, so today I’ve done what I’ve threatened to do for some time, remove the eTune system and replace it with standard tuners.
For those who don’t know, the eTune system was something that Gibson offered for a while whereby, in theory at least, you pushed a button, strummed the strings and the guitar tuned itself. In my opinion this isn’t a terrible idea, but the reality was that sometimes it worked and others not so much and so it wasn’t quick than tuning it yourself. Maybe they came to market too soon with it, a bit more refinement and maybe it would still be around today. Mine had stopped working altogether, so even though I could use the tuners manually, I wanted to put regular tuners on the guitar to make it look neater. It’s a job I put off for a while as I was nervous about doing it, but in the end it was pretty easy.
Some before pictures
Removing the unit was dead easy as it isn’t screwed or glued into the headstock so it came off very cleanly
Putting the new tuners on did involve screwing them into the headstock so this was the bit that was most worrying but it went fine
And there you have it, job done… mostly.
You’ll notice there’s no picture of the guitar re-strung and that’s because I snapped a string when I was doing it
I think I was so relieved not to have ruined my headstock that I messed up a job that I’ve done several times before without issue. The final touch will be to swap out the eTune truss rod cover to banish it forever!So if this a job that anyone is considering attempting, it’s dead easy.
