Sealed tuners.... Or are they? An experience with machine heads.

Headphones

Well - they aren't!

I've found no sealing system in any tuner (well, so far).

I had a gritty tuner and chose to strip, clean and re-grease (it is lockdown after all); and it's been a joyous journey of education.

Having a problem with only one, I've gone on to strip, clean and lubricate quite a spread of designs over the last few days.

Despite a range of ages and usage patterns too (my 20 year old daily player Strat being the most used), I've not found a single wear mark on any of the bearing surfaces, nor of the teeth on the wheel or worms.  Not what I'd expected at all.

What I have found is a wide spread of lubrication regimes - even within the same set - from never seen any, to fully swamped (the strat set was 50/50 dry vs flooded)

The gritty tuner's grease had sort of crystalised (the Strat's Schaller), while the stiffer ones were bone dry (no hint they'd ever seen a lubricant) and the silky ones well lubed.

After cleaning and reassembly they all feel silky smooth and effortless to use, all just functioning as they should (and feeling expensive).  I used a teflon grease as you're wondering.

Proably the best engineered would be the PRS CE locking tuners, though the feel and operation were probably the worst "before" action (despite being my youngest and most expensive instrument) and now match the (rather excellent) Vanson cheapies I have on my PRS SE SC, which were by far the best from the start (about ten years old I think).

Perhaps the most fun trick was how to get the blank disc off the back of sealed/cast tuners.  Heat the case up (I found water from the kettle the most controllable), this expands the case, then simply lift off the disc with a magnet.  Mine was from an old dead PC Hard drive.  Much easier than all the web tricks with drills, epoxies, screws and hammers.

I'm about half way through my instruments and rather loooking forward to what I'll find in the rest...

ICBM

Headphones said:

Perhaps the most fun trick was how to get the blank disc off the back of sealed/cast tuners.  Heat the case up (I found water from the kettle the most controllable), this expands the case, then simply lift off the disc with a magnet.  Mine was from an old dead PC Hard drive.  Much easier than all the web tricks with drills, epoxies, screws and hammers.

Wow. I will remember that! Brilliant .

normula1

PC hard drive magnets are likely to be something like neodymium. I've a couple stuck to a surface in my garage and they're a complete pig to move