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I wanted to share my experience with anyone thinking about trying out these geared pegs. I have a set of each on a violin right now.
1. Installation. Both require some reaming. The wittner come in smaller shaft sizes so you might need to ream less. But there is little room for error in how much or little you ream. Since it's held in by friction if it's off the peg slips. The perfections have a small thread in the shaft that does not need glue if you do it right. I found the Knilling were easier to install.
2. Look. Hands down the Knilling look like traditional pegs. The wittners do not at close range.
3. Tuning. Both are leaps and bounds better than friction pegs. The wittners are so accurate (higher turn ratio). I can tune in seconds with both. I don't use a fine tuner on either violin.
4. Feel. I like the knillings better. They feel like pegs. You can even push and pull the mechanism to control their action. The wittners have a slight mechanical feel and you can feel gears clicking.
5. Overall. Both are good products. Solid construction and tuning is superior to wood pegs. Having no Fine tuners is good. If I was installing on another violin I'd get another set of knillings but the wittners are a close second.
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Great review dpappas.
Thanks for the write up. I agree with your notes except for that they are better than friction pegs. For many yes, but for people like me who tune often and quickly, no. For most professionals, traditional pegs are quicker and better.
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but the one who needs the least."
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I've been considering these for a long, long time. I wonder if you aren't losing an important skill by not being able to tune quickly with standard friction pegs. Plus, there's the fact that they take longer to restring, since the turning ratio is no longer 1:1.
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Fair points, FM and Dan. I can use friction pegs, but I don't want to. I get that for some the old way works well or even better for them. I do have to say that engineering wise, they are better.
And string changes aren't that bad.
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I would actually like a set for my violin, I only hesitate because I don't have too many options for places to have them installed and I don't know if I want to have them permanently changing my violin. Personally, I'm all for anything that makes the instrument easier to use and/or play, but I still admire the traditions of it. I'm sure changing the strings isn't any more difficult than on a guitar with machine tuners. I think they'd have to be drastically out of tune for it to be really time consuming to tune it on the fly. I think if I do get them, the Knilling set.
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Where do you live Dan-Hur?
"The richest person is not the one who has the most,
but the one who needs the least."
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I got mine from Fiddershop, installed in minutes. The Wittners come in more sizes and will require less reaming. I didn't have to ream my second violin at all to install them.
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I live in a one-horse hamlet in Northeast Ohio. I'm leery about installing them myself because if I goof, there's really no way I could afford to have it repaired at the moment. My current peg situation isn't great either. It might be due to the weather, but they stick like crazy. I believe they still have some peg compound on them, may need to reapply or think about getting them adjusted.
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Depending on where you are in NE Ohio, look up Peter Horn in Brecksville. He mainly works out of a shop at his house now, and his prices are pretty reasonable.
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@Dan-Hur - I don;t know if this will give you confidence or not - but here's a little story.
I got a 3/4 fiddle from ebay (intended for experimental purposes, but it turns out is it quite playable). The one major problem were the pegs. They look as if they may have been shaped using a chain-saw, and the peg-holes could have been reamed-out using a rat-tail file.... seriously, it was probably just log-term wear ( it is about 90 years old and clearly ha been played a LOT ! )
Initially, I removed the strings ( one at a time ) and worked the pegs quite vigorously in the peg hole with a LOT of Hill compound. I avoided doing things like just twisting a half-turn or so back and forward, and continually worked them in the same direction, clockwise for MANY turns, and anti-clockwise for MANY turns. A "reasonable" amount of pressure into the peg box was applied. Eventually, I guess the wood "compressed" to some extent and they actually became usable.
However - and to get to the point of fitting planetary geared pegs - the pegs themselves had other "issues" - they had wear-grooves from the actual strings, and were uneven - leading to an uncertain and uncontrolled winding of the string as they were tightened. Soooo - I looked into getting new pegs (supplied oversize) and fitting them.
For this I required two items - a peg shaver, and a 30:1 reamer (just to re-do the pegholes, although they now seemed more or less OK after having "worked the pegs" for a while as mentioned above.
You won;t need the shaver of course - but you may well need a 30:1 reamer - they are not at all expensive (well, the super-duper pro ones are, but a basic tool will be just fine).
What I'm getting at is this - it is NOT difficult. In fact, before I started on the violin peg-box I built myself a "sacrificial" peg box from some scrap wood, and experimented with the reamer just to see how deep, how rapidly, how easy, how much pressure etc etc was required to ream out the hole.
Although fairly happy to get involved in any sort of DIY/construction project, I am always cautious. The "sacrificial" peg-box was worth its weight in gold ! And once I had the "measure of the beast" by making a dummy peg-hole and just observing how LITTLE can be taken off, I went ahead, reamed the peg-holes and (in my case) shaved the oversize pegs.
^^^ my sacrificial peg-box - pretty much to size in terms of width and gap
If you ARE driven to fit geared pegs, to be honest, with just a little bit of care, and one simple tool ( and, you may not even NEED it, the pegs may fit ) I'm sure you would succeed. The one thing to perhaps be aware of is - depending on how old the violin is, it might possibly have had the peg-box reamed out in the past - if it has gone "too far" to accept the geared pegs, it will have to be bushed and re-bored and reamed - and THAT is another story.....
I seriously recommend not copying my mistakes. D'oh - 
Please make your own, different mistakes, and help us all learn :-)
If the old style pegs are properly installed they work quite easily. All too often we buy inexpensive violins because this is all we can afford. The pegs are often not ebony and have not been properly set. If a good peg job slips it takes nothing more than slight pressure to stop then from slipping. If they stick the peg holes and pegs are more than likely not polished. I have seen so often pegs which have large flat spots where they go into the peg box and the strings have pulled themselves into the pegs. These are cheap pegs and cause too many problems. In short a well fitted peg is easy to tune without it sticking or slipping.
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@damfino thanks for the tip! Actually, I think my instructor knows Peter Horn, but she didn't mention his prices, which seems important haha I had one local shop give me a hard time when I mentioned that I had bought my violin online. At the time, all I wanted was a basic setup. I could understand if it was certain Cecilio models or other economy violins, since the service would probably cost as much or more than the violin itself, but it's an intermediate level instrument. Sigh. His loss.
@BillyG thank you for the words of encouragement! I like the trial peg box idea very much, I may give it a try. It's not like I'm totally inexperienced with working with my hands, but the violin seems so delicate to me sometimes!
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I bought my little old German fiddle from Pete, he's a nice guy, and loves to share his knowledge. He had done a ton of restoration work on the German fiddle to make it playable before selling it, and he sold it to me for $200. He keeps all his pricing in a little notebook. If you email him it's his wife that handles that, but when you call you usually get him. He's almost always working in his shop. When I go, I make sure I have time to kill because he loves to chat 
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I have decided to install Perfection pegs in my fiddle. The supplier I get my luthier tools from has violin peg reamers in two tapers, 1:30 and 1:20. I believe 1:30 is the standard for modern violins and also that it is probably what the Perfection pegs have that Fiddleman sells, but I can't confirm that on any of the product websites. Does anyone know for sure which one I need?
Thanks for any help.
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All I know is that they refer to it as being the "standard taper" - which - I believe is 1:30 I have not used them, so don't take my word for it - but - I HAVE recently both shaved some new ebony pegs for one of my old fiddles and reamed out the existing pegbox with a 1:30, and certainly, the existing taper fitted the reamer perfectly before I gave it a very, very, light cut. I'm pretty sure the accepted current standard is the 30:1 - but Fiddlershop will confirm - give them a shout / mail / online chat
I seriously recommend not copying my mistakes. D'oh -
Please make your own, different mistakes, and help us all learn :-)
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1:30
I have one set of Perfection Pegs and two sets of Wittners currently in use. All of them use 1:30.
The 1:20 ratio was used in older instruments (19th century and before). (Assuming the Wikipedia article knows what it's talking about. I know that 1:30 is the modern standard for violins, at least.)
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One more question. The gear ratio of the Perfection pegs is 1:4. Is that enough for steel-core strings, not counting the E which will probably still benefit from a fine tuner? I have synth-core strings currently. My next set will be Helicores. I have 4 fine tuners now but I would like to go back the the original tailpiece that came with my Fiddlerman fiddle if practicable with steel-core strings.
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Never tried them, but the main problem with conventional pegs and steel strings is that initial force required to break the friction holding the peg in place.. that's what causes you to overshoot your target...
Since geared pegs pretty much take that away I would assume that with fine movement you could even tune it if it was 1:1, but geared, just because of the smooth start they would provide so I'd probably give it a shot if I were you. And imo 1:4 on steel strings still gives you more play than 1:1 with synthetic, otherwise we would have to wind 4 times as many wraps on the pegs with synthetic strings if they stretched THAT much
Oh and I just bought some peg compound and applied it to all my pegs on my new violin.. now I can pretty much even tune the E string without using the fine-tuner, which was surprising.. so again I think you have a really good chance at putting the old tailpiece back.
Happy experimenting 
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I do have a question as well though
I decided not to install my fine-tuners on the G D A strings after all.. (mainly because of the reduction in afterlength and looks as well) however I'm not particularly a fan of conventional peg tuning either, since I'm kinda OCD about it... and don't stop till the needle on the tuner is exactly at the right frequency... plus I check tuning every time I pick up my violin and even if it's a little off I start the process...
Needless to say, regardless of how well the pegs are lubricated and how smooth they turn, trying to get it exactly right does take up some time
Problem is.. my violin has really beautiful heart shaped pegs with the brown dot on them, that I really like the looks of.. but all the geared pegs I saw online are simple round black ones... so the question of the day.. is there any company that makes heart shaped geared pegs that you guys know of?
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@Ferenc Simon
I would still suggest giving yourself time to get used to tuning it, especially if you are fond of the pegs already installed... once your strings completely break in, you will barely need to tweak it, unless you take it out of the house. (I have to tweak my tuning more when I take my fiddle out of the house to my fiddle lesson, and then again when I get it back home, just the different humidity levels in both places). It does feel very annoying until you get used to it.
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