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You know that saying about cobbler's children having holes in their shoes?

The button on the low E tuning peg on my D-18 has been loose for a long time now, and anytime I play a G chord (the best chord!) it rattles like crazy. I've always gotten around it in the moment by putting a little tension on the button and it seems to hold, but lately it hasn't helped. The tuning keys are those Martin open back Waverly style tuners. Anyway I needed to order some stuff from Allparts so I figured I'd get some replacement keys too. I ordered the Schaller Grand Tune keys. They showed up yesterday and last night I swapped the keys, only to find out the little decorative plates on the back of the gears are all loose and rattle like crazy (although not as crazy as my old tuner.) I fired off an e-mail directly to Schaller last night, and this morning got a response letting me know they'd send some new keys right away!

Fantastic customer service!

Good on them, though the best customer service is one that is not needed.

Reminds me of a story I heard. A Rolls-Royce owner took his car to the dealer where it was purchased years before because of a noise from one of the wheels. It turned out to be a defective bearing. When the owner picked up his car after the repair, he thanked the service manager for fixing the wheel noise. The service manager replied snootily that Rolls-Royces do not have wheel noises; it had been fixed.

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formerly known around here as burbank
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

Thanks for the heads up, Conor. I see Schaller Grand Tune tuners at LMII from $117 to 181. For that price (actually for half that price) I would expect them to be perfect and not have "to find out the little decorative plates on the back of the gears are all loose and rattle like crazy", much less find out how good their customer service is. I'll continue to use the ones I've had very good luck with and avoid Schallers completel.

ps - when I needed to replace the tuners on my old D18 I went with Gotohs at half the cost (and no rattles at all)

Are they still made in Germany? ... Although, that doesn't mean quite as much as it used to.

Pat

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Pat

Yup still made in Germany.

I wasn't able to find any references to similar experiences online, only sterling reviews. I didn't do an exhaustive search though. This makes me think my experience was the outlier, and not typical.

I did consider the Gotoh's, but figured twice the price, twice the quality. We'll see what the replacements are like before I decide whether I made a good choice or not. Other than the rattling (which is a pretty big consideration obviously) I like these keys. They're much sturdier than what were on the Martin, and they turn smoothly, but feel firm.

There's folks in this world who price their goods at well above the price of their competition just to reel in buyers who don't suspect such behavior might be going on. There is no way I'm aware of to enforce a 'rule' that says 'a' is inherently superior to 'b' because it costs more.

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Peter Havriluk