I Never Thought I Would See The Day When .....

BillDL

.......  I would be UPGRADING a guitar with THIS style of tuning machine:

....... to tuning machines that look just the same.

I hear gasps of astonishment accompanied by "what!" and "why?".  Here's why.

38 years ago at the age of 28 one of the guys at my work was given an Encore acoustic guitar as a present by his children who were quite young at the time.  He learned some basic cowboy chord strumming and was able to participate with others at informal pub sing-songs in the small town where he lived, but later gave it up and the guitar was put aside.  About 10 years ago his wife was diagnosed with cancer and had a lengthy illness that eventually took its toll on her.  He promised her that he would learn one of her favourite tunes and play it to her in the hospice, and that he managed to do before she died.

Since then the guitar has been through several house moves and it ended up lying under a bed unplayed.  It had accrued dings and scrapes and was in quite a sorry state, but was structurally sound.  He will never get rid of it, but felt pangs of guilt every time he took it out from under the bed to vacuum and saw the oxidised frets, corroding strings, jaggy fret ends, and horribly high action.  He asked me if I would be able to tart it up so that it was comfortable to play and stayed in tune, but without changing it visually or touching up any of the dents and bashes unless they were compromising the strength of the guitar.

I quickly realised that I couldn't make it playable unless I changed the tuners, because they were wobbly and had a lot of slop and backlash.  I wondered if I could use better quality single open gear tuners and re-use the back covers, but I couldn't find any that would match the holes in the covers.

Most of us will remember these tuning machines from older Fender Squier Bullets, early 80s and 90s cheap acoustic and electric guitars, and (from what I recall) the bottom line Yamaha Pacificas.  The Yamaha ones seemed to be of better quality, but the other Taiwanese ones were awful.  The raised lip around the edges of the diamond shaped stamped Fray Bentos Pie tin covers were often deeper than the thickness of the base plate for the open gear tuner under them and it either ended up cookie-cutting the shape into the headstock or (more often) being unable to tighten the screws down tightly enough to press onto the base plate and push it against the wood.  The bent hooks made from the base plate metal to hold either end of the worm shaft were usually loose and left a lot of play on the gearing, sometimes the screw going through the brass gear bottomed out in the threaded hole in the bottom of the string post whereby the cog couldn't be tightened enough to stop that wobbling on the wobbly wormshaft, and the plastic or pot metal press-in bushes usually had holes too large to stop the string post from wobbling.

I've had this guitar for about a week and have stripped it down, glued a loose brace, cleaned it up, done some fret tidying and oiled the board, infilled a couple of deeper dings with superglue to stop delamination and peeling lacquer, and fitted a new nut and saddle.  I've been sitting looking at it wondering how to adapt tuners to look like the existing ones to keep it looking original.  I happened to see a set of tuners on the Northwest Guitars website that looked to be a much better quality tuner in the same retro enclosure, so i took a risk and bougt them:

https://www.northwestguitars.co.uk/j-22-squier-style-6-in-line-right-handed-tuners/

Metal bushing fits the string post quite neatly, the cover doesn't go down below the bottom edge of the baseplate, screw-on button that's much nicer looking, the wormshaft is encapsulated 360 degrees by the bent-up sides of the thicker base plate and holds the shaft tightly, and a cog that screws down holding the string post more tightly.  I am really surprised at the quality of these, but I suppose I shouldn't as they cost as much as a reasonable quality no-brand set of die-cast ones - £17.

I'm quite pleased that I will be able to hand back a VERY sentimental guitar that still looks very original, albeit naturally "relic'd".  This has been one of my more satisfying projects.  I hope the crabbit old bastard appreciates it 

Flip

Bill, great story though your generosity and magnanimity were, for me, slightly tarnished by your last sentence - or maybe I'm of a similar age to your target and don't know if or how the emoji modifies your sentiment. The gesture and action were nevertheless very laudable. Well done.

ICBM

Very interesting... I'm curious as to how these are actually made, if the loops that hold the keyshaft go right around.

Moe_Zambeek

Flip said:

Bill, great story though your generosity and magnanimity were, for me, slightly tarnished by your last sentence - or maybe I'm of a similar age to your target and don't know if or how the emoji modifies your sentiment. The gesture and action were nevertheless very laudable. Well done.

That can be a term of endearment up here, so probably nothing to worry about there!

Seeing those tuners takes me right back to many an unfortunate guitar I'd happily forgotten about!

MentalSharps

Sleep deprivation definitely a factor but this story hit me in the gut. Great job with the guitar, with a story like that wouldn't be surprised if that one passed to the great grandkids and outlived all of us!

roberty

Colloquially known as "crapezoid" tuners. These ones look decent though. Well spotted. Any pictures of the guitar?

BillDL

@Flip ;  Yes, as @Moe_Zambeek ;  has surmised, that was a term of endearment.  You should hear what the old tosser calls me.

I always forget to take before and after photos of guitars I've worked on or fixed up.  I will try and remember to take a couple of photos.  It's nothing startling to look at and is just a very standard dreadnaught with dark back an sides and plain top, but it does look a lot better than it did.  I need to remember and vacuum out the years of accumulated navel fluff, pubes, dead spiders, and so on.

BillDL

ICBM said:

Very interesting... I'm curious as to how these are actually made, if the loops that hold the keyshaft go right around.

I too wondered about that aspect.  I should have inspected them more closely with a magnifying glass before I fitted them.

BillDL

Well, so far these replacement tuners have proven to be pretty good quality and as reliable as any of the better quality enclosed diecast ones sold anywhere between £20 and £30.  One trick I learned to do about 30 years ago on open-gear tuners or ones with removeable back covers is to remove the brass cog and rub the bottom of it gently on some very fine wet and dry paper to make it as smooth as possible.  When reassembling it I put some waxy grease on the plate where the cog sits and turns.  I found that silicone grease works well for this and on the worm shaft to create a smooth stickiness that doesn't rub off.