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Tuner barrels with sealed ball bearing end, any good?
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Echi
Posts: 1132
Joined: Jan. 11 2013
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 RE: Tuner barrels with sealed ball b... (in reply to estebanana)
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quote:
quote:
I agree they are as smooth and solid as many top brands tuning machines (including Alessi, Scheller etc.) and quite precisely made.
Nonetheless they are not the same both as aesthetic and quality of the materials (buttons, aluminium holder for the cilinders etc. ).
Of course these are just fancy things for many.
Rubbish. They are aesthetically pleasing, well designed and compete with any top tuners in style and material.
Rubbish doesn't sound good to me.
Given they are good tuners for the money, it's your matter if you don't get the difference on the aesthetics and materials.
Let us speak of their target, the medium/low price range:
The incision on the plate is poor (thick, machine made, and just 1 dimension) as it is the design: not comparable at all with the design and execution of Alessi, Fustero etc.
These tuners seem to me as they have been studied by the same designers of Playmobil: the buttons are are too big and squared on the standard version, and not nicely dimensioned on the oval option. The porcupine shape is far from the Rodgers' version since the first glance and look quite pretentious in the case. I repeat: I'm speaking of the low price range.
The gear is small and not eye pleasing (the rope motif on top of the gear make it too high), the barrel has a Teflon holder just on the top model, while Alessi uses aluminium, and I could go ahead..
When you go up with the price, the quality of the incisions and materials goes up too.
In this case what they offer is comparable with other competitors, but also the price is.
At the same price I like more Alessi, MeM or Exagon.
Anyway, for some people these are just rubbish, for others are important aesthetic details.
To each one, theirs.
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Date Sep. 7 2016 7:16:33
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Tuner barrels with sealed ball b... (in reply to pundi64)
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The thing about aesthetics, is most people don't know what it means, it's a problem.
In the West in mechanical design aesthetics boils down to three things: German cars, Italian cars and English cars. Each type of car, which is the stand in for whatever design product you are looking at, has it's own set of parameters of aesthetic. Cross comparisons to down grade one or below the other two, or hold one car up as superior, are false aesthetic judgments.
German cars are boxy, practical, precise, modular and often over built a ugly, but mechanically tenacious.
Italian cars are sexy, one off by model, often garish or brash, impractical for daily use, powerful fast, and have the greatest potential to raise your social status.
English cars are eccentric, have beautiful crooked teeth, are more complicated than need be, are both a mechanics dream and nightmare, and feature good leather and drive like finest hand made pair of John Lobb Shoes.
Each design archetype is a complete self contained world of aesthetic value, cross comparisons between Jaguar and Ferrari is meaningless. Mercedes and MG, a non issue, all mechanical design aesthetic is self referential between establish brands and schools of design. Bauhaus design and American Regionalist painting, both movements from the early 1930s don't compete aesthetically, they coexist and are self referential in relation to one another.
One does simply walk into Mordor, nor does one compare Milanese high heels to Lobb boots. You just don't, if you understand aesthetic value systems vis a vis professional application of using the product as a pre-made utilitarian component in the fabrication and function or your own work. You make choices based on function vs. value vs. customer interest. One has to put down the snob appeal of cross referencing BMW's to Alfa Romeos to Audi's.
You're either German, English or Italian, period.
Swedes and Spanish cars don't count- Swedish cars think they are Cessnas with wheels, Spanish cars only want to be driven by Picasso and are intolerant of being cars. The French are good at designing weather balloons and use them liberally in the suspension systems of Citroens.
You guys are getting these lessons free, I'm not dong this for my health. I take credit cards and Paypal if anyone one to pony up and pay tuition for these valuable lessons in aesthetics.
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Date Sep. 8 2016 5:27:26
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Tuner barrels with sealed ball b... (in reply to pundi64)
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On the outside the worm gear is suspended between more nylon washers on the grip shaft where the grip shaft is connected to the plate.
The gear also spins on top of a nylon washer and the tension can be adjusted with the screw on top of the gear. I find that loosening the factory snugness and then rescrewing it frees the whole assembly, and then tightens it back together. But that's just me, you don't have to do that, although it's been my observation the bushing on the roller shaft frees up much more after spinning it manually a few times.
The nylon and the design is friction mitigation, calling these "friction-less" I think is misnomer, but how is a marketing guy going to explain all this, and Friction Mitigation system is not as sexy as FRICTIONLESS!
We all want less friction.
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Just a few quick measurements- I compared the Rubners to the Der Jung tuners, I don't have any Sloane, Alessi or Gotoh on hand at the moment:
Plate thickness:
DJ- 1.55 mm
Rubner- 1.44 mm
These seem like reasonable plate thicknesses and if anyone cares to measure any other brands to establish a compendium of plates vs. weight for comparison purpose please measure those plates.
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Grams per individual tuner set, one side weighs:
DJ- 78 grams
Rubner 81 grams
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These measurements seem reasonable for flamenco guitar use. The design and the style and the threshold for fit and finish is all high standard and consistent. To me personally the worst tuners are Gilbert, they function they are light, but they look like military hardware, guitars are supposed to be poets tools not assassins weapons. Some tuners like Schallers, they look 'chintzy' like fake jewelry worn by a lower echelon mobsters wife in a B grade good fellas movie. To my mind, if you have a combination of function, quality and the tuners don't look like they should be fired from a bazooka then they are probably suitable to use on a flamenco guitar. Some of the Rubner designs on the cosmetic level don't appeal to me, they look a little too Jersey Shore and might make better baubles for Snooky's ears than as side plates on one of my babies. So this is where personal taste comes in and the challenge is in choosing functional yet non ostentatious plates and grips.
Images are resized automatically to a maximum width of 800px
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Date Sep. 10 2016 1:23:03
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Tuner barrels with sealed ball b... (in reply to pundi64)
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Oh and the touch of class is that Rubners can be had with different choices of real wood grips, and that all these nylon parts and roller colors can be swapped out for personalization or replacement.
So to make an ellipse back to the OP posters question, I like the tuners,good product good value. The friction less name is more of a marketing pitch.
The thing at issue not the mechanisms ability to keep from letting the string unravel, but the ability to hold mechanical tension in a condition of the least amount of operating friction possible. It's the gearing system, an ancient one, that mechanically holds a winch or rope over a shaft so to can't unwind. Tuner designers are solving for that crankshaft to be a smooth and easy to turn as possible with a set of design criteria that includes size, weight, and gear ratio, etc.
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To go further into why this kind of gearing system is used on guitar tuners, check out this Wikipedia entry on worm gearing:
"Direction of transmission[edit]
Unlike with ordinary gear trains, the direction of transmission (input shaft vs output shaft) is not reversible when using large reduction ratios, due to the greater friction involved between the worm and worm-wheel, when usually a single start (one spiral) worm is used. This can be an advantage when it is desired to eliminate any possibility of the output driving the input. If a multistart worm (multiple spirals) is used then the ratio reduces accordingly and the braking effect of a worm and worm-gear may need to be discounted, as the gear may be able to drive the worm.
Worm gear configurations in which the gear cannot drive the worm are called self-locking. Whether a worm and gear is self-locking depends on the lead angle, the pressure angle, and the coefficient of friction."
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The paragraph gives a bit of gear nomenclature that is useful- A guitar worm gear system is a 'self-locking' mechanical system. The reason this works is due to friction, tuners are designed to have the correct lead angle on the gear, etc. so the coefficient of friction is correct to keep the mechanism from allowing the 'input' the tuner grip and shaft, from being driven by the 'output' the string roller.
The friction coefficient of the gearing is stopping the string tension from unrolling the roller; guitar tuning machines operate due to friction. So here is the confusion. When the designers say "frictionless" they are trying to make the system work as effortlessly as possible without the user experiencing the actual friction coefficient that makes the tuner work in the first place. Which is why the work gear system on a Skil Saw won't work in practice unless is it modified to become a system that is a "one way drive" that uses a gear to reduce the turning ratio and increase the friction at one end of the system- if you reverse the polarity on a skill saw, it will run backward at the same speed it runs forward. You can also manually move the blade, unplug the saw first please, back an forth a spin it either direction. The Skil saw work system is an example of a gearing that can be driven equally on input or output end. The Skil saw tuner would allow the string to unwind,but serves a a good example of a worm gearing that is not designed with a friction coefficient that is 'one way'.
Think about that next time you tune your guitar and you'll begin to get an idea of why guitarmakers are all nuts.
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Date Sep. 10 2016 1:30:18
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estebanana
Posts: 9351
Joined: Oct. 16 2009
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RE: Tuner barrels with sealed ball b... (in reply to timoteo)
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quote:
Are you sure it's not PTFE (teflon)? That would make more sense than nylon as it would only be a few cents more to make and would have significantly less friction.
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Yeah, it was only the original poster who said "0% friction" - but note that the image he posted from the manufacturer simply claims "low friction", which is true. I don't know why kiko_roca jumped on the 0% claim because it's 1) not the manufacturer who's claiming that and b) probably just the OP's command of English that caused him to phrase it that way.
Could very well be PTFE, nylon or Delrin, I said it seems like nylon and there are a few kinds of nylon, whatever it is Rubner parts are interchangeable.
The reason I went into it is to be clear on the meaning of friction in this case. So now we all know worm gears work because the reduction ratio, the cut of the gear, that angle of the cut - all that stuff adds up to a kind of friction that prevents the gear from running backwards and unraveling the guitar string.
Friction is our friend to keep the string from unwinding, but not so much our buddy when the tuners run rough due to friction jamming them up. Friction creates the wonder of the self stopping gear system, but we might feel too much friction in a tuner that is not well designed. Rubner and a few other makers are going after that by padding out the attachment areas and surfaces with these Teflon or nylon bushings and washers. And also by making the gear and worm have a great mechanical fit.
Two main ways to mitigate the friction coefficient for the guitar player is to do what Rubner does, make a good fitting gear and supplement that with slippery bushings and washers. It takes up the slop space and "lubricates" the moving surfaces.
The second way to achieve friction mitigation in a mechanical system is to 'Swiss watch' the system, meaning precision cut and fit the parts so perfectly and on such a high level of accuracy that it roll like angels titties.
Angels Titties degree of smooth costs too much for a consumer product like a car or a set of guitar tuners, so they fudge and mitigate friction with something hard and slippery.
There's a joke in there somewhere.
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The other thing that has to be diad it there can be tension and friction and negative torque / twisting effects tuner that is not installed into headstock holes that are bored out of true in any one direction. That is a whole other subject concerning the creation of difficulty with tuners.
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Date Sep. 10 2016 4:12:31
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