I have just bought a steel guitar (actually a 10-string brazilian viola) and the tuning is too sensitive, because only a small movement on the peg changes the pitch too much. It's not an exaggeration to say that the "useful range" of movement is less than 5 angular degrees, and this is way different of what I got used in other instruments.
I suspect this might be due to two possible causes:
- The machine heads turning ratio is poor;
- The strings are too low-quality;
So, the questions are:
- What is the expected turning ratio (handle revolutions per axis revolution) of a good-quality guitar machine head?
- Is it possible that bad quality strings are the cause for my problem? Should I expect the tuning process to be easier with better strings?
Here's an image of the tuning machine model, taken from the manufacturer site: