Changing machine heads--Any advice?

[Old Neil]

Maybe it's because my ears are old and my hearing isn't what it was in my teens but I haven't noticed any difference in tone at all.

I just prefer the look. I've never been a fan of the Rotomatic design.

 

Funny, I recently went the other way by having Waverly nickel butterbean style open back vintage tuners on my J-45. MUCH better weight balance and, weirdly, noticeably better tone. I first thought " Ahh, the luthier put new strings on" but the existing strings were still quite new and he put on exactly the same type again. Go figure...

[uh66]

I have also suspected that a somewhat neck heavy instrument is a good thing - even going so far in the past as to insert a fishing weight into the truss rod cavity of a guitar or two. Can't specifically recall sonic differences, but my armchair belief is that some instruments can benefit from the extra weight.

 

I had to try this ... my 12-year old son was surprised, when I asked him to give me (no fisherman) some of his fishing weights : -) - He said for how long? I said forever, and he won´t find them. I showed him, and after some laughing he was delighted to help me with my guitar. We managed to put quite a lot of those little lead balls into the cavity. I think it did make a sound difference, but the weights rattled noticably as I was moving the guitar around, so I took them out. maybe I´ll try again with some larger lead pieces.

[blindboygrunt]

While I Might subscribe to the notion that mass in the neck will have an impact, I'm having trouble thinking that just adding weight will change things.

You surely might as well tie a lump of lead onto the headstock with a piece of string?

 

or am I missing something