Originally Posted by
renoyd
My little story: I have a mando that came with Golden Age tuners in nickel with ivoroid buttons. Worked great, nice and smooth, but I wanted black, so I had the identical set, but with black buttons put on. Well, these were tight and sticky. So... spoke with Stewmac, (great folks), and they tried a few while I was on the phone, and yup, for whatever reason, they said that the white ones they had in stock felt a "bit smoother" that the black ones. They sent me another set of black ones and indeed they were also quite stiff. Took these to work where we have some good engineers, and examined them together. Findings: the posts holding the worm gears are spread apart more as you go up from the plate, i.e., they flare out at a bit of an angle from the plate. This means that either the holes there the posts are pushed into the plate are a little too close, or else the worm gears are a little too long. And these have no bearings as do, for example Rubners. This means that while there is no slop, (a good thing), the worm is so tight against the posts that no mater what one does with lubricants, breaking in with a lots of rotation, (connecting and rotating buttons with a drill, etc.), they will never really become smooth. So, as reported in this and other threads, there really are "bad batches". Stewmac, as nice as they are, don't really have a clue here, but this whole particular batch is really garbage, and they really should have had a back to Jesus discussion with the manufacturers in Asia about it, and rejected them, but alas, not. They also, for some reason, have a more limited selection in black button than in white button tuners, so now I'll be looking at Siminoff who has wider choices, and others, (maybe also consider Rubner brand). Of course, need to be careful about spacing and post diameters, etc. - it would be nice to have a no-brainier, drop in place solution. All I want are black buttons on smooth as pudding tuning machines. BTW, the mandolin is a Passernig, can't say enough about it, it is a wonderful instrument!
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