We just returned from the violin shop, yep, clear roads. They were very white, but from salt that was spread, not snow! Need to wash the car next week when we hit 40° for a couple days.

Anyway, I had them put geared tuning pegs on my new Rudoulf Doetsch viola. The friction tuners worked smoothly, but it is a stretch, even with a 15 1/2” viola. My tailpiece only has the fine tuner for the “A” string. I opted not to have it changed when I bought the viola. I was able to tune with the friction pegs, but, like I said it was a reach and I could not bow and turn. 

I really like them, so far. They had it tuned up nicely but by the time I got home, it was out of tune. Nice! Not that it was out of tune, it was nice to tune with the geared tuning pegs.

Might consider them for my Rudoulf Violin. I have them on both of my no name cellos. They came with the gears. I am going to have them put in my Andrew Schroetter. It has the original heavy duty tailpiece Andrew used, and it has fine tuners, but I would like the geared on that too. 

It will take a while longer to change the strings, but that is not done all that often, whereas tuning is done more frequently. A trade off.