Epiphone Masterbilt Century Deluxe tuners

[drguitar001]

Hi all. I recently purchased one of these interesting instruments as I had been looking for an acoustic f hole guitar. I really enjoy the instrument, I even spent time neck mounting a mini humbucker and cutting a new pickguard out of  flamed maple (then ebony stained) so that I would not have to cut a volume pot hole in the original pickguard. Then cut a matching tailpiece insert to match the pickguard.

 

However, I have a problem with the tuning machines. They have a gritty feel and and do not turn accurately. I would like to replace them with a better tuner, but am hitting a dead end. I have read a few of the posts pertaining to this problem others who purchased this instrument also have and have not found a good solution. The problem is that the tuners have unusual spacing compared to aftermarket tuners from all of the tuner companies. I did an exhaustive search with Grover, Schaller, HipShot, D'Addario, Kluson, Gotoh, Schertler and more. I can find tuners with the proper hole spacing for the screws, but then the post is in the wrong place. Grrrrrr....

Anyway, I am hoping that someone has found a replacement tuner that will fit without modifying or drilling other holes into the guitar.

Any thoughts?

[drguitar001]

If anyone is following this topic, you know that I was looking for a set of replacement tuners for the Epiphone Century Deluxe. It is a very nice guitar with pretty lousy tuners. I did not want to modify the guitar in any way so I needed to find tuners that would fit the bill. I finally found a set that work nicely without modification: Hipshot Upgrade tuners. I installed them in this video: 

 

[crandall]

Do you still have the original Masterbilt tuners? I'm looking to purchase a set.