Replacement Tuners for Old Gibson A

[WV Mike]

I'm pondering the idea of replacing the tuners on my 1916 Gibson A - Paddlehead. I love everything about this mando except the tuners. #My tuners are badly worn and I seem to be retuning as much as our banjo player. #I don't want to drill any new holes in the mando, but I wouldn't have a problem drilling new holes in the new tuners to make them fit.

Anyone out there who has done this? #What tuners would work good and where can you get them?

Thanks, Mike

[John Rosett]

there are some vintage gibson mando tuners on ebay right now that aren't too expensive yet.
good luck, john

[acousticphd]

Mike,

This question has come up a few times in the last 6 months or so - at least once it was posed by me. I had/have the same issue with my A1. It had already had an older set of replacement Schallers at some point in the past, and unfortunately also some new holes were drilled in the peghead almost on top of the originals, without first filling them.

I put a used but recent set of Schallers on, thinking it would be much better - but it's not. Still a lot of problems especially on the A and E strings, that I didn't have with the same tuners on a different mandolin. The modern post spacing is not identical to the vintage - or at least it's not on my peghead. I found that the new tuning plates had to be flexed slightly to fit, which I believe must make some of the gears work imperfectly. You can see that the A-string posts especially are angled toward the nut. Or maybe my peghead hole spacing was imperfect from day 1? I wonder whether having the peghead holes remeasured and redrilled, and fitted with modern larger bushings, would help. I'm not averse to some mods on my own instrument if it makes it function better. The idea of drilling new holes in the tuner plate has been mentioned before, and sounds like a good approach to me.

[keithd]

Mike,

I've been living with the original tuners on my teens Gibson, so I know what you're going through. Buying vintage tuners isn't cheap, but there have been several sets for sale recently on eBay. If you are having problems with only one or a few gears, you might be able to replace only the worn parts.

My mandolin teacher has replaced her tuners with Schallers; they are nice. I think they will work with no re-drilling. She had hers installed backwards to get the posts on the other side of the worm; this didn't require re-drilling, but did require making new screw holes on the back side of the peg head. Schallers can easily be refitted with ivoroid buttons; they look much better on a vintage instrument than the plastic pearloid buttons. The tuners and buttons are available from Stew-Mac.

There have been several recent threads about the higher end grover tuners as well; they have screw-on buttons rather than glue-on. Glue-on ivoroid might be the most consistent with a teens paddlehead Gibson A though. If you can fit new ones with no changes to the holes, you can always restore the originals if you decide to sell. The Stew-Mac website will provide the exact measurements for the hole spacing, so you can check first.

If you re-post in the Builders section as well, you will get some responses from the folks who know best.

Keith

[mandroid]

The concept of Re use, perhaps...flipping the tuners side for side, and thus installing so there is a pulling of the gears together, with string tension, where all those years the post above installation pulled them apart.
that would be just a relocation of a few wee screws that hold the plate to the head. snakeheads are that way now.

My Vega BM got both, new Schallers installed in modern placement, but its tuners were rather odd, short and small diameter, no ferrules in headstock. and, besides, hey its a banjo-mandolin, http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/tounge.gif

[Paul Hostetter]

I deal with old gears all the time and with rare exceptions, there is absolutely nothing wrong with them that cleaning and lubing won't cure. Another major cause for tuning trouble is friction at the nut. A final issue in tuning problems is pilot error: there are efficient ways to tune and there are troublesome ways.

If I could only retrieve all the good old gears that people have tossed in favor of more modern (and unsightly) gears of lesser quality!

[atetone]

So Paul could you elaborate on that?
I have bought a couple of old sets and tried to make one decent set out of 3 with very limited luck.
I thoroughly cleaned them and scrubbed them with a toothbrush then oiled them up and still they are not very good.
Do you pack them with a heavier lube perhaps to try to take up some of the slack caused by wear?

[Paul Hostetter]

First of all, I rarely see the wear. People bring me their annoying gears, and what they think is wear is really rather insignificant. They don't think they work well, which is fair enough, but they attribute it to wear when it's really just bad setup, meaning setup of the gears, and often to some extent the instrument as well.

Once in awhile I encounter a cog with a broken or missing tooth. I have never seen this on a Gibson mandolin, but I have seen it a few times on cheap guitars. On a few of the real early 6:1 riveted Sta-Tites (guitar gears) the assembly tolerances have been poor and the gears either don’t mesh at all or they are spotty. When you look at gears you look for all the bearing surfaces: the firmness of the mounts holding the work, the alignment of the worm to cog, the condition of the surface between the plate and the flat surface of the cog, the alignment of the plate to the holes—are the posts really vertical?, are their bushings on the face of the headstock correct and aligned with the plate?, and so forth. Often the bushings are corroded and there’s a lot of friction there. Often the bushings are missing or non-original. Sometimes the holes are worn such that the string posts pitch forward and under string tension they are pulled so far toward the nut that they bind on the plate. There are a lot of tricks in tweaking gears.

As far as lubricants, I never use grease or oil. You can't pack an open gear in any case, because the grease just runs off for lack of a housing to be packed inside of. I used to pack enclosed Klusons, but no more. All the greases, oils and so forth, including Lubri-plate and WD-40 all polymerize and catch dust, and sooner than later they harden into evil crusty sludge that literally gums up the gears. The only lubricant I use is the non-aerosol Tri-Flow, strategically applied.

As I already mentioned, friction at the nut is very often the culprit for gears that seem to be poorly functioning. But it’s worth mentioning again. There’s more to cutting a notch than just generating a groove that keeps the string in place.

Yet another aspect of tuning is whether the rest of the instrument is set up. Older Gibson mandolins are famous for having misplaced frets. If you’re really in hyper-listening mode, they are nearly impossible to tune. No amount of money thrown at replacement gears is going to overcome the fact that the seventh fret is 5 cents flat.

[Darryl Wolfe]

I fully agree with Paul. It's quite nice to hear from someone who does understand the problem.

Paul is essentially decribing a vicious circle. Folks discard old original tuners because they think they are worn. I buy the same tuners off ebay and put them back on another Gibson A-model. I've yet to buy a set that was worn out, and only once in a while do I actually have to perform any significant work on them to bring them up to par. Tuner/tuning problems are almost always in the set-up.

[atetone]

HMMM,,, this causeth me to think,,, where did I put all of those spare parts?

[GTison]

Mine on my old A model seem to work fine off of the mando but under tension they are imposible to turn. I also broke a pearl knob off my friends 29 Fern. While he did warn me that it would happen I still felt bad. He since has replaced them for these same problems. About half of all old A models I've ever picked up had those tuners which were bound up. If the string post is pulling and binding what is the cure for that? New bushings? "Refurbished" bushings ?

[Paul Hostetter]

Maybe Darryl has better clairvoyance than I. I'd have to see it bind up in my own hands to understand what's going on and what then to do about it. I don't doubt that others could find as much as half the old Gibsons with gears not up to snuff. I only know it's a farily straighforward process to making them work great. I'm into invisible reapirs, and keeping things original whenever possible. I guess there's a chance the bushings might have ooched a bit and need to be reset in the right place. That would be unusual, and like I say, I can't tell without actually seeing the mandolin.

It breaks my heart to think of a '29 Fern with its original gears languishing somewhere while it's got Schallers or something else http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mad.gif on there. Pearl buttons are not hard to replace.

[acousticphd]

Maybe Darryl and Paul and perhaps others could also address/revisit this related question that probably applies to many of us:

The original vintage tuners on my late-teens Gibson A and A1 are long gone (not my fault) and replaced with other sets sometime in their history. In fact, it's a fairly new set of Schallers I installed on the A1 after I bought it (replacing an even older set of Schallers), that are giving me the most grief. As I mentioned above, the post spacing or maybe the contact with the bushings are not optimal. What is the the best choice among available tuners? Or do you recommend hunting for and maybe paying a premium on a vintage set? Or should I have a pro try to adjust the fit and setup?

[Paul Hostetter]

Jeff - Schaller has had a fairly bad patch in terms of quality, so the problem may simply be a bad set of gears. Post spacing is also a reasonable guess, and when they’re "off," it’s only by about 1/32" but it’s enough to mess up the function completely. My favorite contemporary tuners, with a caveat that I wish they looked a bit better than they do, are the Gotohs. It’s what Steve Gilchrist puts on his mandolins, it’s what Collings uses except on their toppest-of-top varnish model (which uses Waverly), and it’s what Roger Siminoff sells.

http://www.siminoff.net/Media/parts_misc_mach_comp.JPG

They’re not perfect, but they work fine, they take interchangeable buttons of various sorts that are held on with screws, and the price is right. They also come in the other configuration of A gear: worm above the cog. All come in nickel as well. Waverly makes some extremely nice gears of course, but they cost an arm and a leg and an arm and another leg and they don’t retrofit on a number of the primo early Fs because of the post spacing issue. I don’t think they have ever made gears for A’s anyway.

I have a page about the ups and downs of mandolin gears, a work in progress, you might wish to have a look. (http://www.lutherie.net/mandolin.gear.direction.html)

[acousticphd]

Thanks, Paul. The Schallers I put on my A1 had been on another mandolin in the modern worm-above orientation; so as Mandroid suggested, maybe reversing the pull direction on them only increased the gear imprecision, in addition to spacing and bushing variables. I'll check your help site and look into set of A-style gotohs, though certainly not those 24K-yellow ones.

[Paul Hostetter]

The gold Gotohs don’t really look as bad as in that photo, but I hear you! Nickel A-style Gotohs can be had from Saga and Allparts. Ironically Stew-Mac has only ever carried the F gears in one flavor.

On another thread I heard that Gotoh has been upgrading their better mandolin gears. The Gotohs that Bill Collings currently uses are "custom-made" and have a slightly different button post than the square one I'm acquainted with. I keep hearing about them but have yet to see any. I have two Collings mandolins in my shop right now, both have Schallers on them, but they're not brand-new. I'm anxious to know what either the Collings Gotohs or the new "upgraded Gotohs" are like.

[WV Mike]

I want to thank everyone for their responses. I've been out of the loop for the past few weeks. Since I'm really not sure my tuners are "worn", I'm going to take it to my local luthier and have him give it a good cleaning and checkup. It that doesn't work, I'll look into the Gotohs.

Mike

[Scotti Adams]

..If I were you I would contact F5journal aka...Daryl Wolfe...Im sure he could give you some insight...

[Paul Hostetter]

You could also read what he already wrote, above.

BTW, I have a set of the new and improved Collings Gotohs enroute from Austin right now.

[Darryl Wolfe]

Paul,

Gotoh doesn't make a post below/reverse worm A-tuner do they. Does anyone?

I had a set of Waverly's custom built that way (for a special mandolin)

[Paul Hostetter]

The photo above, from Roger Siminoff's site, shows a set of upside-down Gotohs. I think the one on the right that says "A-5" is what you mean, right?

[Darryl Wolfe]

Exactly..I was wondering whether they are intended to be installed like that though. I appears that the worm is cut for installation that way

[Paul Hostetter]

The worm is cut the same, in any case. Whether the worm is installed above or below the cog, the button turns the same way to turn the post the same direction:

http://www.lutherie.net/gear.direction3.jpg

[danb]

Nice photoshopping Paul, unless that's the very rare double-peg tuning system http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif

[Paul Hostetter]

Photoshop? Who me?

http://www.lutherie.net/gear.direction4.jpg

[neal]

I have a feeling every mando I've tried to tune has that configuration.

[mandroid]

as i was seeing were all those gears cut ... ?
RH thread IE: \\\\, righty tightie
whereas LH thread ////,
would turn ring gear, a different way,
[or such as my vision works on wee pixtels]
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif

[Paul Hostetter]

The pre-photoshopped version of that image does this:

http://www.lutherie.net/f-4.gear.direction.jpg

It would do it whether the worm was mounted above or below the cog, per my first photoshopped image (the second one with four buttons is silly, of course). The angle of the worm threads only has to match the cog.

[mandroid]

So, going back to the Gotoh machine assortment,wee un PS image; do they cut the gear-sets both ways?

an illustration: I view the 2 different sorts on hand for me to look at; worm gear ,and cog to match:
old gibson is RH cut \\\\ same as a comparison machine screw, new Schaller F leans the opposite way//// and in instrument from the knob perspective CW tightens string, whereas the old gibby, RHworm CCW tightens,
[so much for the, thing turning another thing, SAT test of spatial interpretation]
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/wow.gif

[Paul Hostetter]

Here's a photo of a set of recent Gotohs. Notice the direction of the worm gears.

http://www.lutherie.net/gotohs.3.jpg

Now try and wrap your head around the fact that they turn exactly the same way as the F-4 gears above, which have their gears cut the other way.

[mandroid]

lefty tighty righty loosie....I i already turn my brain around for the one set that goes the tother way,[MOP faced buttons, Schaller F on J.Lebeda made jazzica mando]
rather than worry that its not the same as the other one...
'by the time I finish this song' http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Paul Hostetter]

Um...what?

[mandroid]

Mnemonic #for the mechanic gone dyslexic, [or #working on lefthand thread#bits of their bicycles #(right end of crank axle,and left pedal). http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

which one is not like the other one ?,for the sesame street deprived
http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/mandosmiley.gif

[Paul Hostetter]

Oh. OK.

[Darryl Wolfe]

We still haven't really addressed my question. #Does Gotoh make A-model tuners that will turn the correct direction when installed in the old fashion. #Turning Pauls picture upside down and comparing it to the teens worm, obviously this set will turn in the wrong/incorrect direction. #Hence, the need for the slight misnomer "reverse" cut worm gear (as compared to the modern style.)

Again, I had Waverly custom assemble me a set of replaceable pearl button, Loar A-5 style tuners using 8 G-string shafts from their F style set. (because their A-style tuners have glued on buttons and they use the modern worm over configuration. #I know of no other way to do an older A-model right.

[Darryl Wolfe]

Like this

[Paul Hostetter]

I have seen Gotohs both up and down. What's currently available I cannot say for certain, but again, Roger Siminoff says he sells them. The A-5 images I posted earlier were direct from his website:

http://www.siminoff.net/Media/parts_misc_mach_comp.JPG

Turning my Gotohs upside down will just net you gears that turn the wrong way. Don't do it!!

[Darryl Wolfe]

Well, I asked Siminoff, and I am still confused. #His answer implies that all of his worm under tuners tune backwards

My Question to him:
Hi Roger,
#
Your tuner/machines listings on your webpage are causing me some confusion. #I'm aware of the Gotoh reverse Loar style tuners for F5, but haven't seen any A-style ones.
Do you really have Gotoh A-model tuners with worm under AND orig style # # #---\\\\\\\\--- # cut worm.
The picture shown with the worm under A-tuners appears to be #---//////--- which would turn backwards.

His answer to me:
Yes, I have A style tuners and they are shown in our site under "Bridges, Machines, etc" - there is a photo on left hand column of part #304-G (gold) and we have them in nickel. I do NOT have the gears cut either way. These machines can be used with worm gear below, but they do turn/tune backwards if used inverted. Worms on the original tuners used on Gibson et al had right-hand threads. Our A and F tuners have left-hand threads.

[Fred's Mobile Homes]

I purchased a set of reverse A-style Saga mandolin tuners (presumably made by Gotoh) from Mandolin Brothers in the mid-'80s. They were used on the Kentucky A-600 mandolin, the top of Kentucky's A line. They are silver plated with pearloid screw-on buttons.

I installed these tuners on a 1920 A-2. Even with a little flexing of the tuner plates to accommodate the difference in spacing previously mentioned, the tuners work fine, and the knobs turn in the normal direction.

[Paul Hostetter]

Darryl - I'd be confused too, especially in light of Fred's post, above. Saga has been my only source for Gotoh A tuners for years, their M-124 set. I never thought to to see if they had them in sub-flavors; what I simply got was quite adequate for my purposes. Why don't you just right-click-lift and then send him this image I made up:

http://www.lutherie.net/f-4.gear.direction.jpg

...and ask him if that's how his tuners work? All this backwards, reverse, below terminology is so prone to confusion. If his gears really do turn backwards, it simply means he's taking the set and turning them upside and and backwards. Since I know Gotoh makes various F tuners with the two flavors of work alignment, it stands to reason he has the A gears to match. But, who knows how far reason's going to get us? Unlike Schallers, you can't take them apart.

Fred, you can get nice ivoroid buttons from Stew-Mac that slide right onto those Gotohs if you hate the pearloid look enough. (I sure do! Now, if they'd just put slotted screws in there instead of phillips head...)

[Darryl Wolfe]

Thanks Paul.

Regarding slotted screws, I will take some pics of the Gotoh mods I do for F-tuners. I think some folks will like the look you can get by changing all the screws, flattening the back of the cog gears, recutting the plate end to more of an arrow-end and turning the posts down to orig spec. (and of course, shortening that too long top button shaft)

[Darryl Wolfe]

Here's some modified Gotohs. #They're a bit cruddy from laying around, but are brand new silver plated versions from the 80's

[Darryl Wolfe]

The gears have been flattenned, plate end recut and screws replaced with flat slotted. #They will get pearl buttons and the shaft will be shortened. The next time I recut the plate end, I will get it a bit more authentic. (sometimes you really need to study before you act) http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[Darryl Wolfe]

The posts have been turned down to match original ones. #These will be replated. The set has also been soaked in various chemicals, acetone, muratic acid and such to remove the poly/lacquer overcoat that they put on the silver plated versions. They now have the dullish silver plated look of the old ones

[Paul Hostetter]

These look so much better! Just changing the post screws is such an upgrade. Where did you get yours? I'd gladly buy a bunch.

If anyone's interested in the evolution of the Gotoh gears, I just got a set of A gears from Bill Collings to compare, and wrote a little page about it here. (http://www.lutherie.net/gotoh.compared.html)

And Stew-Mac has a new and less expensive set of mandolin gears coming down the line later this year, and sells ebony buttons to go on them (and others). I have some button samples enroute right now. Looking forward to the gears.