To achieve the magic re-tuning tricks I work into my playing, I use special tuning pegs taken from a banjo. 

I'm not the first guitarist to use them. English guitar icon Adrian Legg has been using them since the 1980s. Adrian uses them for a kind of pedal-steel effect within his stunningly beautiful compositions. When I saw him play, I loved the sound but had an idea that I would use them more for Jeff Beck style ethereal whammy-bar moves, or like the pitch wheel on a synth keyboard. 

And Adrian (and banjo players) are restricted to using the pegs with open strings, because their left hand is busy tuning. But I've always been so into right-hand tapping, so I figured I could tap chords and melodies with right hand, and simultaneously retune them with my left hand, which would give me a different creative freedom, and maybe a way to make unique sounds nobody else was making on an acoustic guitar. 

So I went to buy a set, only to find they were exclusively made and sold by the guy who invented the design, banjo legend Bill Keith, in Woodstock, NY. And also, they're kinda pricey! I couldn't afford to buy six of them, so I decided that as I was mainly intending to use them to play melodies, I'd get two, just for the treble strings. 

They are beautiful objects, indestructible and precision crafted from stainless steel, with little leather washers. 

Each peg has two little thumbscrews sticking out the side. Basically, you tune the string to a high note, and lock the black screw, then tune the same string to a lower note, and lock the silver screw. And now, you can twist the peg to bend the note, but it won't go past those two locked points. Cool!

They move much faster than guitar tuners, so you don't have to turn them so far to change the pitch of the string. Which is great, but also makes regular tuning feel a little like “tuning on ice”. That's probably why I stuck with just two of them on my guitars. 

They enabled me to write guitar parts for songs like Passionflower, Gloria, Cocoon and others, and I love them. 

Go get some! They're really fun and easy to use. They're only available from Beacon Banjo. Bill has sadly passed away, but his son Martin is keeping the detuning cogs turning, thankfully. As so many people have wanted to copy my setup over the years, you can now order a “Guitar 1/2” set of pegs, which is very cool. 

Or just buy an Ibanez JGM11, which is the first guitar ever to come pre-fitted with these magic little devices. 

Get bending!