Recent Golden Age Tuners

**HoGo** · Oct-15-2018, 1:54am

Originally Posted by mandopixie

"That is pretty amazing unless the originals came in different sizes".

They surely did.
First of all there was the switch from old post spacing to new and even though I never measured a set I think the difference in post spacing is enough to assume the plates were not same. From studying photos and direct measurements I know that there were at least five different versions just on Loar signed F-5s (mostly noticed by three or five mounting holes) starting with wiggle end plates on early models (like F-4 tuners but with pearl knobs), then the long spacing arrow heads (some of them worm above?), then short spacing arrowheads followed by the three hole version and after Loar era they went to worm above... etc, the tuners changed all the time. From manufacturing point the mounting plates were made out of longer strip and cut to length using dies so slight differences even within batch and especially during the transition times can be expected (mixing leftover old plates with new but punching the holes for posts later).

One thing that folks should remember on these tuners worms are assembled first (riveted) and then plated which adds material to the gears and may cause harder turning (if they didn't compensate for that) till the plating gets worn off the contact surfces. Dry turning with drill won't help, you need to add some kind of grinding paste that will cut material away. Basicly that's the old school way of grinding worm gears. The cutting head is similar worm with teeth and it cuts and at the same time rotates the wheel till the final depth of cut is reached. I cannot see reason why this wouldn't loosen ANY tuners (unless relly visibly screwed during manufacture).
Several times I solved problems with tuners it was the stepped holes that caused problems. Many makers drill holes for bushings only halfway through headstock and the rest of hole is 1/4" or so which is pretty much exact size of post on many tuners. The taper of headstock creates need for slight angle of posts through wood when bushings are mounted square to face of headstock but tuners square to rear making it easy for posts to jam in place. Once dirt accumulates or even dry weather will make the holes too tight and tuners won't work well. From perhaps hundred or so mandolins with problematic tuning I only had to change tuners once when the originals were worm under reworkde to worm above by drilling off the riveted tabs and soldering them back in reverse order - and with relly bad misalignment - they've worked for few decades even in that crude state.

**MikeEdgerton** · Oct-15-2018, 7:08am

OK, let's get literal. We are not talking about the change to worm over, we are talking worm under wiggle end tuners with the .931 post spacing. Obviously if the plates changed there is a difference. Did they make the wiggle end worm under .931 post spacing in different sized plates, to be direct, did they make them about 1/8th of an inch longer on each end? That's what the question is about. The rest, although informative, has nothing to do with the question.

If you look at the back of the snake head that has the GA Restoration tuners on it you'll see th faint outline of the original wiggle end tuners about 1/8th of an inch beyond the replacements. Either Stewmac didn't pay enough attention to the originals when they measured them or they measured a set that was different than the set that was on this snake head when it left the factory.

If they made the original wiggle end worm under .931 tuners in different lengths then Stewmac gets a pass. If they didn't then Stewmac made a pretty silly mistake.