Classical guitar machine heads

TheOtherDennis

A friend of mine has had the pearl knob bit broken on one of the tuners on her classical guitar by one of her kids.

Would I be able to find and fit a replacement or would I have to replace all three of them as a set? It would look a bit odd, as it's an extremely ornate set, and from a quick search done so far, I'd be lucky to find an exact match for the other side of the head.

ICBM

I do this a lot on classical heads...

It depends on the design of the heads - on some, you can replace just the keyshaft by undoing the screw that holds the gear to the roller, and pop the keyshaft out of the two 'hooks' that hold it. On others, the keyshaft is held under a 'fold' in the plate and you need to get the whole thing off to release the shaft from behind, but it can be done. On a third type, the keyshaft is retained by rivetted loops on the plate, and can't be replaced.

On any of them, you can usually heat a new key onto the old shaft - having heated it off a donor one!

If you could post a good pic of the damaged head, with an accurate measurement of the spacing of the 'hook' parts if it's one of those, I'll have a look and see if I've got a spare key that fits. The measurement is critical though, even some that look like they should fit don't very well when actually tried.

The worst case scenario is just to replace the whole set - you can't buy individual sides anyway - or not unless someone like me happens to have a matching one . Then it just becomes an issue of whether the roller spacing (they're almost all the same nowadays though) and screw spacing and locations match.

TheOtherDennis

I phrased it badly - it's just the peg head that's broken, the tuner itself is fine, so it doesn't need completely replacing - unless that's the only way to do it.

ICBM

No, you phrased it perfectly, I knew exactly what you were describing . Helped by being by far the most common problem with classical guitars...

Those are actually a very common type, I'm a bit surprised you can't find any like it. The good news is that it's the first type I described, and the easiest to repair - you don't even have to take the plate off the guitar.

I may have the right key, I'll have a look. Can you confirm the exact measurement between the two inner faces of the hooks that hold the keyshaft?

ICBM

Aha... yes I do . I've got a baseplate exactly the same in my box of spares, and the key I have definitely fits. It's very slightly different - the ridge halfway up the keyshaft has little ridges on it instead of being smooth, but the key is the same shape and it should look fine.

These keys are notorious for breaking by the way - the plate I've got has all its originals missing, two have broken and the third has been donated to another set already...

It will be in this pic somewhere!



PM me your address if I don't have it already and I'll send you it .

TheOtherDennis

When I said I couldn't find any like it, I meant the specific design of the long plate - all the curlicues and stuff.

I'll get that measurement for you...

sev112

Same thing happened to me once - I used a pair of pliers to tune the D string for ages 

ICBM

TheOtherDennis said:

When I said I couldn't find any like it, I meant the specific design of the long plate - all the curlicues and stuff.

I'll get that measurement for you...

Don't worry, it should be fine, this is what I have -



Obviously I'll just send the key bit .

TheOtherDennis

sev112 said:

Same thing happened to me once - I used a pair of pliers to tune the D string for ages 

Yeah, she said she might do that herself, but I thought I'd ask.

And @ICBM - that's me tellt, then, and no mistake. Awesome, thank you very much, address duly PM'd. Let me know what I owe you.