Can you guys post before and after pics of swapped out tuners?

[onewilyfool]

Pics would be great, process photos would be great on how to fill holes, which holes are left visable...etc. Maybe descriptions of what it took? What were the original tuners, what you changed to? Thanks

[ryanfender]

I had the "Gibson Deluxe" kluson style tuners on my 1990 J-200. A few months few I got it, one of the tuners started to come apart. So I needed to make a change since the Gibson kluson don't have the best reputation.

 

Back

 

Front

 

Then, due to finishing defects with Gibson lacquer mixture or they put it together wet, the tuner washers took for the finish on the peghead at every tuner.

 

 

After a lot of finish touchup and buffing, the finish was touched up to allow for the more vintage style peghead using Gotoh kluson replacements. This kept with the original aesthetic of the guitar and required no drilling at all. The tuners work much better than the originals. Now, I hate any guitar with tuners that require the bushing to thread into the back of the tuner which then requires the washers to protect the finish. I will ever buy a guitar with this type of tuner again.

 

Front after tuner change:

 

 

Back:

[Deadgrateful]

I replaced the crappy grover-mini tuners on my el-00 for some Waverly ivoroid's. Not the easiest task in the world but certainly not more than 45 mins work.

 

The bushings for Waverly's are smaller so you need the larger ones available from stew mac, but even then they don't sit in the holes very snug due to the lack of a nasty washer to hold them firm. To get around this I used some hog dowel I had lying around to plug the holes, which I then re-drilled. Another option would be slightly larger bushings, but I'm not sure there available...

 

You can see (from the terrible iphone pictures) that there is a slight residue in the finish left from where the washers were removed (just like with Ryan's), but it's barely noticeable and as it's a cheap guitar I'm not about to spend any more time making it perfect.

 

New holes needed drilling for screws, and I plugged the old holes with Mahogany splinters and then touched up the top with black nail varnish. I then smoothed this with wet and dry and buffed to a shine (the pictures were taken just before this stage).

 

[jchabalk]

Here's my old hummingbird going from 1# of '70s mess to much less than that of waverly goodness

 

you can see all of the marks and holes if you look closely, it's definitely not elegant, it definitely holds its tune a tune better now and the headstock is the part of the guitar that's in the best shape :)

 

Before:

 

After: