You should try to remember the reason and then discard it. Planetary tuners are the way to go if you do a lot of retuning, as well as steel core strings. Or else just get used to turning the friction pegs, which I personally hate. The fine tuners are called that for a reason...they're good for fine adjustments but not designed for big ones, that's the reason it gets hard to turn. You're going to end up stripping the threads, or bending something, and probably have to be constantly straightening your bridge.

Strangely, I've never heard of open fiddle tunings until right now. Yeah, I regularly use Cross Tuning (I keep my cheap fiddle tuned this way to simplify things). But isn't a fiddle pretty much tuned in an open tuning when it's in Standard as long as you are playing in the keys of G, D or A?

Yeah, I meant cross tuning. Short between the ears....   I have enough fiddles to keep ones dedicated to cross tunings at home, but when I go to a jam, I don't want to carry more than one since I'm also carrying at least two more instruments and a chair.

When tuning and de-tuning with the standard/tapered pegs, just keep the string winding away from the pegbox wall. The pegbox is wood and the peg is of hard ebony. If a string gets somehow between the peg and pegbox socket/wall, at best it will smash/weaken the string, or shear the string at worst. I prefer making these adjustments in a well lit area.

At the fine tuner end, make sure the string is running straight thru the "claw."
The barrel or thimble or ball end needs to be centered. Otherwise the string is being tightened over a sharp break. The actual loop of the string barely touches the fine tuner claw on my violin. While the barrel/thimble is seated and centered evenly in the clutches of the claw(s).

I use geared Planetary "Perfection Pegs"on 3 fiddles.

I play exclusively with my fiddle cross-tuned. I can't recall the last time I played any of my fiddles in standard tuning - I think maybe around 2011. I've had one string break on me in all that time. Was it because of cross-tuning? I can't say, but only one tine - if it was the cause - I'm ok with that / worth it.

I love the Perfection Pegs - I had them installed one set at a time - wanting to make sure I was comfortable with it. Retuning is a breeze. Fine tuners are not necessary. It's nice to have one for the E, but - really - not needed. The only fiddles I don't have them installed on are the ones that I would like to see hold their value as being "original".

Another vote for planetary pegs to make large shifts in tuning I have Wittners on 5 of my fiddles. I also have Wittners on one of my cellos and the Chinese Song brand on another cello.

That's my solution...I just have 3 fiddles tuned differently-Standard, Open A, and Cajun. Yeah it's a bummer having to have 3 fiddles on stage but it saves the audience having to suffer through my retuning.

Fine tuners get hard to turn at the ends of their travel because rosin dust collects there and most folks don't use the ends of the travel often. My fiddles are pretty stable and i never cross tune now, but when I did, 1 tiny drop of 3 in 1 oil on each tuner kept them free and easy to move for a long time.

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Originally posted by timsch

I'd read that strings will break sooner if the pegs are used frequently for retuning, which is one reason I do it this way. How much of a problem is this really?

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This is nonsense. Strings will not wear out faster because of normal tuning with pegs. They may wear out more quickly if you are constantly taking them on and off and subjecting them to more extreme tension changes or running them over improperly shaped string grooves until the windings prematurely unravel, but normal tuning should be no detriment. Strings tend to have a playing life that is based on usage, not retuning. Fine tuners are no better on strings than pegs. If a string is out of tune, it has to stretch the same amount to reach the proper pitch regardless of where it's adjusted. If the grooves are properly shaped and lubricated, the string won't bind and will change pitch along its length from pegbox to tailpiece, not merely its afterlength or vibrating string length.

If your pegs fit poorly, you may struggle to tune with them and find tuners at the tailpiece to make things easier to control. Wittner pegs provide ease of tuning at the pegbox with a fixed gear ratio that allows for ease of fine adjustment. You can get rid of all fine tuners at the tailpiece with them, although some players like the convenience of being able to tune from either tailpiece or pegbox. But there is no real advantage to fine tuners other than having a theoretically more finely adjusted pitch.  A well-fitted set of pegs maintained well will work as well as anything mechanical, it's just that they take more maintenance.

If you play in multiple tunings, ease of retuning is inportant unless you have multiple violins that you can keep at specific tunings. When I gave a recital of Biber's Rosary Sonatas, almost all of which are in different tunings, I used one violin for practice and retuned between every sonata but had six different violins for the performances to minimize pitch instability (I was using gut strings). I found some strings on eBay that were about a century old that I used for practicing, expecting to go through a lot of strings with all the retuning. However, only one string had to be replaced in months of practicing. Those strings had no business lasting that long after sitting unused so long, but they proved to me that retuning is not really an issue. Add to that the fact that some of those tunings get fairly extreme. For one sonata you have to cross the D and A strings, and due to the tuning of the church organ at the venue, I had to tune up to A454 for that sonata. Not one string broke in performance or practice with that sonata at that pitch, even using unwound gut on all four strings.

Get your pegs set up well and don't worry about the wives' tales. If you want the convenience of fine fixed adjustment at pegbox or tailpiece, use fine tuners or Wittner pegs. At one of the shops where I once worked, there was a father-in-law who liked to open rental contracts. He always included a lot of useless nonsense in his spiel (it took him three times longer than anyone else to open a contract, which was a major hassle when there was a line of waiting families extending into the parking lot), but the part that always drove me up the wall was when he would caution the kids that tuning as much as half a step too high would snap a string. He didn't play any bowed string instruments and had no idea what scordatura was.

Have you ever seen the scars below over-adjusted fine tuners? The only thing I'd like to add is that you have to keep an eye on the bridge and keep it and the nut properly lubricated.

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Originally posted by boxbow

Have you ever seen the scars below over-adjusted fine tuners? The only thing I'd like to add is that you have to keep an eye on the bridge and keep it and the nut properly lubricated.

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Those scars are a very good reason not to use the metal tuners that stick out from the tailpiece (like the Stabil). Not only do they add a lot of weight, shorten the afterlength, and rattle often, they can seriously damage a violin top. The Wittner tailpiece has tuners that don't come quite as close to the top, but if you have the pegs you can do away with that and just use a traditional tailpiece with or without a Hill tuner for the E that's very low profile. 

Thank you all for the pointers. I appreciate not having to learn these lessons myself.