Can you identify these tuners?

[grandmainger]

Anyone? Anyone?

http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif Germain

[Jerry Byers]

They look like the deluxe version of Grovers.

[Sitka]

They may be Ashton Bailey tuners that come on Morgan Monroes.

[David Newton]

They are Shallers with the gears swapped from a gold set.

[Jerry Byers]

Have Shallers ever used a screw-in button?

[mandroid]

Someone went to a lot of bother in swapping gears, even if they just got the gears themelves. plated, and drilling out replacement buttons or just drilling and counersinking the buttons that were on there to put in some flat head phillips machine screws. do look just like the Schaller plates and so forth

[Paul Hostetter]

Have Schallers ever used a screw-in button?

Not that I am aware of. These are certainly not Grovers, though I understand the hunch because of the screw-on buttons.

http://www.lutherie.net/grover.mandolin.tuners.jpg

They're not Rubners, and they're not WD. The plates and screw details look way too cheesy for anything nice.

[grandmainger]

Thanks for the input everyone... They do look like a set put together from different parts... The plot thickens http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif
Germain

[David Newton]

I'm still holding out for the Shallers. Isn't there a prize? Fake screws.

[Jerry Byers]

The worm gears on the Shallers use slot screws; the other one has Phillips head screws.

[Jim Hilburn]

I don't know where they've been or what they've been through, but those plates are Schallers.

[Paul Hostetter]

I don't think they're Schallers. They reek of Asian knockoff.

[Jim Hilburn]

Could be, but they must have taken an imprint of Schallers stamping because it's very close. I tried to take a detail photo of some Schallers for comparison, but my camera doesn't do that well up close.
There seems to be a couple of discrepancies though.

[Sitka]

These aren't Schaller plates. The parts connecting the tuner shafts to the plates are different.

This is the best explanation that I could come up with.

Micah

[Sitka]

Sorry, the picture got resized.

The tuners on the right are Schallers. The tuners on the left are the given tuners.

The given tuners look like the Ashton Baileys that I took off of my Morgan Monroe. Is there a MM owner that would care to share pics of your tuners?

Micah

[Desert Rose]

Ashton Bailey you mean Korean tuners made in Qingdao http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif

Scott

[Sitka]

Ashton Bailey you mean Korean tuners made in Qingdao http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/sad.gif

Scott
It is somewhere in that area. It says "made in ___" (I don't remember the exact name) on the back of the plate. I looked it up a while ago on google earth and it pulled up a place in Korea. If I recall correctly the name was two words long. I'm assuming that they are produced in a close proximity to the Morgan Monroe factory.

Micah

[Paul Hostetter]

We have a photo of the front - how about a photo of the back of the plate?

[Jim Hilburn]

Yeah. And where did they come from. Is this a test?

[grandmainger]

The back plate has nothing on apart from R and L (Right and Left)... Not a test, I'm just curious... http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif They were in a box of leftover parts in a music shop in London...

[Jim Hilburn]

Like this?
This is Schaller.

[Jim Hilburn]

Here's the front. Compare this to the original and you'll see why I thought they were Schallers.

[Paul Hostetter]

I sure see why you thought so but, as usual, the devil is in the details. Again, phillips head screws, the type of knurled edge around the cogs, the mother-of-toothbrush buttons, and the degree of delicacy in the "engraving" on the plate, especially evident around the edge. One looks like a bad casting copy of the other.

http://www.lutherie.net/fake+real.schallers.jpg

These may still be decent gears. Gotohs were often feckless copies of other brands at first, and many of them were better than the gears they were copying, including Kluson, Schaller, et al.

[Paul Hostetter]

I just noticed: these seem to be matched, but I think one set is going to turn the opposite direction of the other. Germain?

[Jerry Byers]

Good eye: I noticed the gearing as well.

[sunburst]

I have no idea who made the tuners in the first photo of this thread, but as long as we're spotting differences...

1. As mentioned, the gears are cut the reverse of the schallers.
2. there are 16 teeth on the Schaller spur gears and 15 on the 'mystery' spur gear.
3. The shafts are generally longer on the mystery tuners, and there are only 3 lengths, whereas the shallers have 4 different lengths.
4. the screws and buttons as mentioned.
5. Jim's photo is much sharper than Germain's! http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/biggrin.gif

[grandmainger]

Paul, you are right. The gears are reversed.
Here's a pic of the back... Definitely not like the Schallers Jim posted... http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/rock.gif http://www.mandolincafe.net/iB_html/non-cgi/emoticons/smile.gif Odd innit?

John, good eye on the shaft lengths! The set I have has only 3 different ones...
They have a nice weight and feel, and apart from the cheapo plastic buttons, they are well built...

[acousticphd]

This is interesting. Are the Schaller F tuners, with the worms below the gears, really just their A-style plates turned upside-down? The way I tell Grovers from Schallers (A-style, which is all I use) is by looking at the screw hole spacing. On Schallers, the screw holes 1-2 have the odd, larger separation. Whereas on Grovers, screwholes 4-5 have the odd, larger separation. On the F-plates, it looks to be just the opposite.

[Paul Hostetter]

So it's no wonder they ended up in someone's parts drawer: they turned the wrong way. Oops!

The Vietnamese mandolins on eBay often come with a pretty decent knockoff of the deluxe Gotohs. They're "shaft above," but at least they turn the right way. This photo is real fuzzy, they look pretty good up close.