Tanglewood TW28 acoustic machine heads

[NickS]

I may have mentioned elsewhere that I came to tune my Tanglewood TW28 acoustic last night and the tuning button fell off the machine.

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The guitar is coming up to 20 years old in a couple of months, bought as an 18th birthday present for my older daughter but she found it too large for comfort and asked me to get a smaller guitar. The local Tanglewood dealer doesn't think there's any prospect of getting a spare from Tanglewood for a model that old, so I've been looking at the alternatives. Ideally I'd like a replacement set that won't leave me with old screwholes, etc.

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Look at this; no seam like on some buttons - nice and smooth.

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More attention to detail; little spikes to help anchor the machine head and stop it trying to rotate.

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So Gotoh SG301-01 seems to be the best alternative from a big name and they provide decent measurement drawings that make me confident they would fit. I haven't found enough detail on the WIlkinson ones to be able to work out whether they would match the existing screw hole. Then I stumbled across some by "Musiclily" with some positive reviews by people who sound as though they know what they're talking about, at a fraction of the price. Maybe I'll try that..

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Order placed... ah. Shipping from the good ol' US of A, be with me a week Monday. Hopefully.

[Thom]

[NickS]

Whut? Delivered to the Amazon locker yesterday.

[NickS]

So here it is: I only replaced one for now.
The Musiclily kit comes shrink-packed on card.

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The tuner contains minor finish flaws compared to the original Tanglewood tuner and some of the corners on the button are not visibly rough but a little rough to the touch. The post has more side-to-side play too.

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The tuners look very similar underneath though the flanges are slightly different in size - I've used the original screw. I chose the cheaper tuner kit from Musiclily so the button is smaller than the original.

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The Musiclily post is about 2mm shorter, but it works - the headstock thickness on the Tanglewood is 17mm. You may also spot that there is a little more gap between the post and the ?ferrule. The Tanglewood washer has more of a step or bevel on it and is a little more polished.

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Yeah, that's a bit of a tangle of wire there but having had to cut the string to get the old tuner I wasn't going to fit a new set of strings until I knew it worked so I spliced a piece of old B string to the wound D just to check it was all OK.

[dots]

NickS's documentation game is on point as ever. great post!