Welcome to one of the most active flamenco sites on the Internet. Guests can read most posts but if you want to participate click here to register.
This site is dedicated to the memory of Paco de Lucía, Ron Mitchell, Guy Williams, Linda Elvira, Philip John Lee, Craig Eros, Ben Woods, David Serva and Tom Blackshear who went ahead of us.
We receive 12,200 visitors a month from 200 countries and 1.7 million page impressions a year. To advertise on this site please contact us.
Hello - I have a slot head flamenco with machine tuners. Said guitar came with decent quality tuners, but they weren't all smooth, and the guitar struggles to stay in tune. One knob in particular had more resistance then the rest (the G string), and the tuner knobs had a lot of play when turning..
Anyway, I upgraded, and as I removed the old tuners to swap them, I see the barrel holes that were reamed are shall we say less than perfect. 5 out of 6 are clean, but the D string tuner on the inside slot looks like the luthier took a disco nap and didn't realize he was pushing down on the drill, so the perfectly round hole is not so round..As for the even spacing of the group..again, not so perfect. Clearly a jig was not used. Ironically, the performance of the old tuners was fine on the D string. The G was the one that was tight. Whatever
Otherwise it's otherwise an excellent guitar.
But I can see that in a perfect world tuner barrels and slots would harmoniously align. No so much here. So my question: what are the allowances for tuner barrel holes? Do they need to be spot on perfect so the barrels slide in w/out an inch to spare?
If I make sure the barrels aren't pinched, but in some places there are holes that are a bit too big, is it OK? Or should I have the whole headstock filled and re drilled?
RE: fixing a sloppy tuner hole job (in reply to turnermoran)
quote:
ORIGINAL: turnermoran
5 out of 6 are clean, but the D string tuner on the inside slot looks like the luthier took a disco nap and didn't realize he was pushing down on the drill, so the perfectly round hole is not so round..As for the even spacing of the group..again, not so perfect. Clearly a jig was not used. Ironically, the performance of the old tuners was fine on the D string. The G was the one that was tight. Whatever
It's difficult to get the roller holes to be perfectly parallel and spaced correctly without a jig of some sort. Even free handing on a drill press can be problematic. I suspect the out-of-round hole on your guitar is the result of someone enlarging it to eliminating binding. You may need to do something similar for the "g" string. In a perfect world tuner rollers should slide effortlessly into the holes with only slight relief but they should never be tight since humidity changes can cause the wood to expand and cause binding.
RE: fixing a sloppy tuner hole job (in reply to turnermoran)
There is a fix for that, a veneer can be wrapped around the inside of the and glued in. Then it can be smoothed with sandpaper on a correct diameter dowel.
If you want to bring bring it over to Oakland while I'm here for a few more days I can look at it for you and suggest a way to go.
Printable Version
New Messages
No New Messages
Hot Topic w/ New Messages
Hot Topic w/o New Messages
Locked w/ New Messages
Locked w/o New Messages
Post New Thread