Tuner Advise

well.... i got the neck I think I want. I completed the lacquer work on it early this week. Then came the adventure with the tuners. I went with the tuners I had on hand, Fender Schaller (like what is on an American Standard). THey seem to get the job done well enough and they fit the neck I got at Hardee's (another story for another time). These are the tuner with the two pins on the back of the body so there is no screw used to keep them from rotating on the head stock.

So, I pressed them in and figured I would align them and just sort of mash them into the headstock wood to mark drill location for the two little pins with the two little pins. Not 100% sure what happened but almost none of them lined up. I had to over size the holes for the little pins to get the tuners in straight. Almost a disaster one of the holes almost shows.... and I put a scratch my hand rubbed lacquer job due to these little pins.

Now I know why you always see vintage style tuners on home brew stuff...or at least tuners with exposed screws. That would have been much easier. Live and learn, they are installed they will be fine. I hope drilling the mounting holes in the neck is less frustrating.

I drill all these holes before applying finish on the neck. It saves me from damaging things. Also, being an anal retentive engineering type, I model the tuner's pin locations in CAD and print it 1:1 on a mylar sheet so I can drill the holes really precisely.

I should have thought about that. but i figured just pressing the actual tuner into the wood would have done that.....at a minimum I could have taken a rub of the old neck the tuners came out of... o well not as close to perfect as I would have liked but its all together now and sounds real good and plays much more to my taste. I like the guitar much better now. not bad for my first build. The process is much different than putting an amp together or stomp box.