I bet this is a dumbass question, but can I put Rubners on my A5?

[Brian B]

My first post here, after lurking for years. So, howdy, all.

I've got a 1990 Gibson A5-L. I bought it new. Man, that thing has traveled. It even spent six months caseless (but well packed in a Halliburton suitcase) on the back of a motorcycle over the Himalaya.

A couple of years ago it needed new frets and a fresh setup and I always wanted to get the fretboard extension routed down because I was not capable of not clicking my pick on it. While it was in the shop I had the original gold Schaller hardware swapped out. ust not a gold kind of guy. I didn't specify to the shop, figuring he'd just put the same thing on, but the mando came back with a set of silver Grover 309s.

What a mistake. I shoulda stuck with the Schallers. They worked fine. I must have gotten a bad set of Grovers. They have a huge amount of slop in them and there are a couple of keys that have rough spots and a couple of others that just will not stay in tune. Doesn't matter if the strings are new or old or what brand, how meticulously I clean the nut and saddle. Two of them just creep constantly. I've tried whatever I could find to try to make them better, cleaned the gears, looked for burrs, tried adding a touch of torque to the screws. I'm done with these things. I don't know if there's any general problem with 309s, but I'm starting to think the constant tuning problems are even starting to piss my dog off, and I can't blame her. She's a saint for putting up with my playing when the thing's in tune.

I'm interested in the Rubners, and Kent there has taken the time to provide me with info, but it seems like the screw placement is going to be off here and there.

Anyway... I have no idea what I'm doing, but what I would like to do is:

1. Seek feedback on the Rubners in the first place. Are they good? Any opinions, comments? Doesn't seem to be much opinion on them floating around.

2. Seek advice on general swappability. Several things have confused me. Kent says the OD dimensions of the Rubner bushings are 8.4 mm. My Grover bushings seem to be kinda loose—not wobbly loose, but they come out easily, and on the Grover drawing at Stewmac the spec is 8.23 mm, so I'm guessing that 2/10ths of a millimeter might fit without reaming. I don't have the Schallers to measure them and can't find Schaller drawings. On Schaller's web site, I can't even find mandolin tuners, and what with the originals being nearly 30 years old, I don't know if a current drawing would apply, anyway.

But the screw positions are different. Grover's drawing shows the screws 23.01 mm apart. Measuring them, I can not get the ruler to read anything but 22 mm from center to center of screw heads. On the Rubners, all the screws are 23 mm apart. On the Grovers the bottom screws are farther apart.

What I'm worried about is the screw holes being only a hair's width different and so there not being solid wood for the new screws to go in. And what about screw pitch? What if those are different (I'd be shocked if those were the only things that weren't)? The Rubner screw holes at the ends of the tuners are, according to Kent, 7 mm from the ends, which is pretty close to what I measure on the Grovers, but the overall length of the Rubners is shorter (which is nice, because the Grovers go all thew way down to the edge of the headstock).

Anyway... any thoughts on whether I might be making a mistake or if it's easier than it looks or advice on how to proceed would be hugely appreciated. Seriously, screwing around with these Grovers constantly is a buzzkill extraordinaire.

Thanks!
Brian

[pops1]

I have Rubner's on my A and they dropped right in. Most modern tuners should be interchangeable except maybe the bushings. I think the Rubner's have smaller shafts, so smaller holes in the bushing. Could be my memory is failing too, but that's what I remember.

[Brian B]

Thanks, Pops. Do you happen to know what the tuners were you replaced?

And how do you like the Rubners?

[pops1]

I don't remember the tuner that were replaced, but yes I like the Rubners, very smooth.

[Trebor Renkluaf]

I replaced the tuners on my Mid-Missouri M4 with Rubners and they dropped right in. Very nice tuners.

[Gary Leonard]

There are some other threads on tuner replacement, including a couple on replacing Collings tuners. I did a replacement on my MTO, and it went pretty smooth. I used the existing bushings though, the Golden Age ones worked well.

I wouldn't worry too much about holes lining up, they are real easy to fill with glue and a round toothpick. In my case, the middle hole lined up, and I had to fill two holes and drill a new one (Golden Age had three screws, Rubners 4). One of them was just a hair off, and I felt better about filling it and re-drilling a pilot hole.

The one issue I had with the Rubbers were the cheap screws, fortunately I had some extra screws from a previous Golden Age tuner replacement I did on another Collings. Even with the correct size pilot holes, I had an issue screwing in the Rubner provided screws.

[Mandobart]

The Rubner screws were about half as long as the ones from the no-name tuners I was replacing. Also the slot head vs phillips makes it a little trickier. I went with the Rubner provided screws anyway. Its nice they threw in 3 extras, just in case. You drop one of those and you may never find it...