Fender "vintage" split tuners: the tuner of kings?

While changing the strings on my "fifties" Mexican Fender Tele (bought in '98) I was struck by the now outmoded tuning pegs, which look like the ones in this picture:

The post of the tuners has a hole cut vertically down into the post.  So there's essentially a small hole in the middle of the post where the string goes down, then you thread the string through a slot that crosses the post, and you just start tuning it up.

This differs from the design that Fender adopted later on, which is the design common to almost every other electric and acoustic guitar manufactured in the last thirty years - a post with a hole through it, accessed from the side.

There's something almost aristocratic in the way that the end of the string is hidden from view.  There is basically no risk of poking oneself with a string end on a guitar with these tuners.  But the downside is that it takes longer to put a string on than with the modern design.  You have to put the string through the body, get it to go taut then add 2-3 inches, cut it (or just bend the string back and forth quickly until it breaks) and stick it all the way down in the hole, then hold it in place while you tune it up, because the string loves to jump out.  Especially the high E.  It just happened to me when I was changing my strings

So I can kind of understand why this design fell out of favor.  It pretty much sucks having to change a high E string on this guitar on stage, which forces me to always bring a backup guitar when I have an electric guitar gig.  Sometime in the sixties Fender changed to the (Gibson) post design.  But no less an authority than Hamilton luthier George Furlanetto declared his devotion to the vintage tuners in my presence back in the nineties.  He thought that they were a better design, and simple and fast to use.  So maybe it just takes some practice.  But I have had this guitar for twelve years now.

From a guitar forum (http://www.thegearpage.net/board/showthread.php?t=507536):

Here's the skinny direct from Fender's Mr Gearhead:

Vintage keys. For these, you'll want to pre-cut the strings to achieve the proper length and desired amount of winds. Pull the sixth string (tautly, remember) to the fourth key and cut it. Pull the fifth string to the third key and cut it. Pull the fourth string between the second and first keys and cut it. Pull the third string nearly to the top of the headcap and cut it. Pull the second string about a 1/2" (13 mm) past the headcap and cut it. Finally, pull the first string 1 1/2" (38 mm) past the top of the headcap and cut it. Insert into the center hole in the tuning key, bend and crimp to a 90-degree angle, and wind neatly in a downward pattern, being careful to prevent overlapping of the strings.

If the high E is giving you grief stick a round toothpick in the hole till it's tuned.

If you have a guitar with these tuners, read the whole forum.  There are some good ideas for dealing with the pitfalls - I'm going to try some of these techniques myself at my next string change party.

Aub.

I just did a Google search and found out that one of my guitar teachers in Burlington, Aubrey Rolfe, passed away in 2006 in his eighties.  I have nice memories of going to lessons in his little studio (attached to his home on Drury Lane), where he would bring out dog-eared music sheets for me to work on.  Aubrey did everything through notation.  No rote-learning or tablature (which was still pretty rare at the time) for him.  One of my friends who also took lessons with him told me that he taught Steve Winwood how to play guitar back in England, but I couldn't find any confirmation of this in my search.
Aub was a nice man and a fine guitar teacher.

If the name on the headstock isn't enough...

Early days

I started playing when I was twelve, on a Yamaha FG-345 acoustic.  I started out playing on my lap, Jeff Healey style, picking out songs from a book called Pocket Beatles, which helpfully showed chord frames with numbered fingerings for each simplified arrangement.  Milton Okun was the music editor and the book was published by Cherry Lane, as I recall.  My first lessons, at a studio called Guitar Man in Burlington, Ontario, were with Steve Barker, a Robbie Robertson lookalike who also played banjo and got great tones out of a modified Fender Bullet.  This was in early 1982.  He disabused me of my lap-style approach and I started reading out of Mel Bay, Book 1.  This book was anachronistic even then, with pictures of big ol' Mel playing his D'Angelico archtop and such up-to-date tunes as "Sparkling Stella," which revealed itself on first run-through as "Twinkle Twinkle Little Star."  But my assiduous practicing, aided by a rather quiet social calendar, soon convinced Steve that I was ready for more ambitious and school-hallway-jam-ready fare as "Sweet Home Alabama." I remember that my fingers would hurt so much from playing every day after school that I had to take a break the day before my lesson to recover.
I worked my way up through the ranks of teachers at Guitar Man for the next couple of years, through the talented Sandy, who played guitar only as a sideline to piano but had enough chops to lift and teach to me "Little Wing" (the Hendrix in the West version, which has always given me a nice variation in my approach to this oft-played rock standard) along with Led Zeppelin's "Black Dog" and "Over The Hills and Far Away."  My next teacher, Mike Allan, introduced me to Travis picking through "Blackbird" and "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right." 
I was a nascent classic rocker, shunning almost all of the current pop music of the day - Michael Jackson, Culture Club, Duran Duran - in favor of the cool, dead rockers of the past, especially Jimi Hendrix, Led Zeppelin, the Beatles, and the Doors.  The Doors' "L.A. Woman" was the first guitar part that I ever lifted myself.  I remember spending literally hours at the cassette player, rewinding over and over to pick out each note on the Yamaha acoustic. 
I got a paper route to save up enough money to buy an electric guitar and amp.  My eventual purchase, made at GB Sound in Burlington, was a Vantage Avenger.  Black body and pickguard, maple fingerboard and a pointier version of a Stratocaster design.  It was in a chipboard case and came with a cheap ten-foot cord.  The amp was a Roland Spirit 10, which had built-in buzzy distortion.  Both items, I must note, smelled terrific. I spent many hours coaxing Hendrix-like feedback and vibrato-bar howls out of that rig.  My imagination was, at the same time, being fired by books like No One Here Gets Out Alive, Scuse Me While I Kiss The Sky and Hammer Of The Gods, which mythologized the 60s rockers and their seemingly magical hands.
One day my mother, in one of her coolest moves ever, unexpectedly presented me with Joe Pass's album Virtuoso #2, which was completely different from the records that I was listening to at every spare moment, and featured some of the best guitar playing I had ever heard.  It was a solo jazz guitar record, with Joe playing beautiful fingerstyle chord melody on standards and some more modern tunes, like Chick Corea's "Five Hundred Miles High." I brought that tune to my guitar teacher, Mike, and this led to my final teacher promotion at Guitar Man, to the guitar man himself, Carter Lancaster.