Praise told you about JR Judd's and how to contact them. We don't live too far so he did the new peg job on my fiddle while I waited. The new friction pegs work great. I think geared tuners would make the instrument to heavy to hold in place with the chin and shoulder rests, so I would try to avoid doing that. Of course, you can play while trying to hold up the fiddle with your left hand, but it really slows you up!

I put off having the peg job for a long time by occasionally chalking the pegs. It is an old timer trick. I used powdered chalk like what contractors use in a chalk line, and would occasionally put a squirt in the peg head. You can also LIGHTLY rosin your pegs, but the danger there is that rosin is sticky stuff, and you could get the peg more jammed in than you bargained for.

I am a firm believer in having fine tuners on all the strings, usually they adjust enough that you seldom have to mess with the pegs.

Good Luck, Rick!

Hardiman the Fiddler