Official Luthiers Forum!

I'd put that down to technique, then, because millions have used fairly standard 12:1 gear ratio tuners with very good results for many, many years.

Pegs give a 1:1 ratio and I find it none too difficult to get the strings to pitch using them. I've always been quite content with the 12:1 of vintage tuners. I think many manufacturers have upped the ratios purely competitively.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

[QUOTE=Don Williams] So what's wrong with good ol' Schallers? They're a fine tuner. I've never had anything but great luck with them.
[/QUOTE]

Don, I strayed from Gotho about 12 month ago when I was working on an old Japanese electric neckthru. I went for Schaller's beautifully finished vintage nickle M6's and their 3 way adjustable TOM bridge for something special.

They were special alright, one of the tuners had 1/3 turn slop straight from the box and another was very stiff, so stiff in fact one needed to apply far too much pressure to start it turning, then it would jerk as it broke friction and travel too far. This of course made tuning that string near impossible.

The 3 way TOM bridge was also faulty right from the box. One of the saddle piece screws just fell out of its bearing before it was even fitted to the guitar making the whole brige worthless. I bought these parts from LMI, and to their credit, they gave a full refund with an apologetic no questions ask approach.

That experience has left me a big fan of LMI; I will never forget the courteous customer focused way in which they handled my complaint. They wore the inconvenience created by the fault of their supplier with a smile rather than trying to pass the buck on to their customer like so many businesses try to do these days. I really did appreciate that .

I also will never forget my own experiance with those Schaller products. I really think they have a QC problem.

So with that said, it's back to Gotho for me from now on. Their quality control regarding function is impeccable. I do however agree with the bugbear already mentioned of the casting line around the middle of the chrome buttons, when it comes to finish, Schaller still hold the upper hand, but for price and function there is no contest IMO.

Cheers

Kim

Er......Uh.......I'm gabberflasted!
Never had any problems like that!

I'm with Mattia on the ratio thing...who wants to make a bunch more turns to get the string on to begin with?

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I'd prefer if Waverly went ot an 8:1 ratio, like the true vintage tuners.

Low ratio(high numerical) suck biggeth. You must turn a large radius just to tweak a slight bit on the string. Ughhh. Gimme a good, fast ratio. A musician who can move a finger in 1/100th second to within .001-.002" repeatedly, needs a slow, sloppy gear? Don't think so....

I detest Gotoh's and their low gearing and that God awful parting line they can't seem to get rid of on their buttons. They also start to feel 'clicky' with much use, instead of smooth as they were when new.

Waverly or Schaller here....(these days, just the Waves...)