I have just bought a Peavey Generation EXP custom. Lovely guitar, but I have had it now for a month and it simply refuses to stay in tune. I am not a novice, I do a bit of gigging and each time I have tried to use it live it has had to go back in the box as it sounds awful. The strings have been twanged, thrashed and pulled and are way past any bedding in of new strings.. What is more disconcerting is that it never actually seems to get into tune, never mind stay there. Tune it, it sounds okayish, play a few barre chords, sounds okayish, pick across an open chord and its all over the place. Is there any 'set up' reason why a guitar will not consistently tune up or vary so much from strum to strum? I have never come across anything like this.
Have a look at the ends of the tuning knobs - not the mechanism, the knob. Many tuners have a small screw, set into the end of the knob. If there is, just tighten it until the guitar stays in tune - it shouldn't take much and it shouldn't need over tightening. If it still refuses to stay in tune, you may have to take it to a tech.
This is, of course, assuming that you're not swinging on the vibrato arm like King Kong from the Empire State building!
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Also don't rule out the nut seats being too high. Check the string height at the 1st fret wire by lightly fretting each string at the 3rd fret. There should be around 5 thousandths between the bottom of the string and the top of the fret wire. If it is significantly more than that it will need to be adjusted by filing the seats lower.
is there a hand tremolo bridge on it?
if so then the springs at the bottom may be too loose.that happened to me and it wouldent stay tuned
how do you spell illiterate?
Just another thing to consider, I had pretty much the same problem as you, I have an old tremelo bridge on it (non- locking) and I figured out that if you lubricate some of the parts: tuner holes, string trees, saddle... basically any point that the string touches, it really helps. I can't guarantee that it'd work in your case but it worked for me.
Steve-0
sadbuttrue
I am almost 100% certain it is your intonation. When your intonation is off, you guitar will always be out of tune somewhere. When you tune it nice and open chords sound great, then barre chords up the neck will sound horrible. So, you tune it so those barre chords up the neck sound right, and your open chords will be way off. That is intonation.
Use a good tuner. Pluck your E string open and tune it as perfectly as possible. Now, fret the E string at the 12th fret and pluck it. If the note is sharp (very common), you need to move the saddle back toward the rear. If the note is flat (rare), you need to move the saddle forward.
Loosen the string fairly slack before you make an adjustment to the saddle. The adjustment screws will then turn easy, and you won't mar them up. Then retune the open string as perfectly as possible again, then recheck the fretted note at the 12th again. Take your time and try to get as perfect a match as possible.
Do this with all strings.
Note- Before adjusting intonation, make sure you like the string height or action first. One thing that can throw off intonation is the action being too high. If the action is too high, you cannot accurately adjust intonation. In this situation, when you depress the string to fret at the 12th, it is distorting the length of the string. Intonation will still be off slightly.
I am almost completely positive this is your problem.
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