ShortScale.org

I just picked up a 1977 bronco, it's missing a lot of things, one being tuners.

What are my options? Can I buy anything from allparts that won't require modifying the tuner holes? I think I read the schaller ones on there might not be direct replacement.

How about fender 70s f tuners are they the same diameter as they were back in 1970's?
link

Is it worth it to upgrade to another style of tuners and drill some new screw holes?

Yea I would use these F tuner reissues. Darren Riley is great too, he has done all my guitar tech work, great guy. I actually bought a set of F tuner reissues from him for another guy on this board for a 70's bronco project too. They will definitely work just fine.

i have bought shit from that dude before. he sent me all kinds of stickers and shit in my little box that i got in the mail.

would do business again with him

ill sell you the stock tuners off my bronco for 100 bucks

That's alright, I'm not so concerned with restoration, as with just good quality parts

Novacaine wrote:I just picked up a 1977 bronco, it's missing a lot of things, one being tuners.

If you have the time, pics would be nice.

Reissue F tuners > Vintage F tuners.

They simply work better.

haha I will post pics it's just currently in the mail

I have guitars with vintage tuners and they work alright. but I was reading somewhere about how the vintage F tuners were actually quite shit. one or two on a guitar would often break soon after the guitar was purchased. the dealer would then order a new tuner from fender for the customer. so the ones left on the guitars today are actually the good ones.

more trivial history: the F tuners were originally developed by fender as a way to find a cheaper option than outsourcing to Kluson. later, on the tele deluxe they had tuners made by schaller. these proved to be very popular tuners so fender contracted them to make the tuner gearing to fit under the F cover. if you look at the tuner under the cover, there's a little mark denoting "made in w. germany".

also, a small observation: I've just noticed a difference in the tuners on my '77 MM neck and '78 Mustang neck. the '77 has chrome plated covers and buttons, everything else is nickel plated. the '78 is all chrome. I think the '77 tuners must be some sort of "transition" tuners. they were using the new chrome parts with the old nickel parts.

counter point to mages post on vintage F tuners.

mine are 38 years old and work fine


mine have white plastic buttons though from an earlier era in time.

the f tuners on my jag aren't really that good. i guess they stay in tune, but they just feel really cheap compared to the modern ones. some are really hard to turn and the action isn't smooth on any of them.

So I tried to put the re-issue f tuners in the 1970s headstock but the holes are undersized for the tuners. Anyone know the correct size to drill the holes?

measure the posts?

Justin J wrote:the f tuners on my jag aren't really that good. i guess they stay in tune, but they just feel really cheap compared to the modern ones. some are really hard to turn and the action isn't smooth on any of them.

I've had the same experience with the chrome button F tuners on my 66 Jag. A couple are good but the rest are hard to turn and generally operate poorly. They will stay in tune but sometimes I have to tune it a few times to get them to. The white button ones that were on my 72 Music Master were amazing. All operated smoothly and stayed in tune very well.

yeah, that's probably because the '66s were the early ones made by fender and the '72s were made by schaller.

Never knew that. The Schaller ones are fantastic.

haha, I would measure of course but I'm lacking even a ruler at this moment, let alone a set of calipers or something.

Richard wrote:Never knew that. The Schaller ones are fantastic.

yeah, that's what I was getting at in my long winded post above.

mage wrote:the F tuners were originally developed by fender as a way to find a cheaper option than outsourcing to Kluson. later, on the tele deluxe they had tuners made by schaller. these proved to be very popular tuners so fender contracted them to make the tuner gearing to fit under the F cover. if you look at the tuner under the cover, there's a little mark denoting "made in w. germany".

The tuners on my 77 Stang work really well. They're smooth and stay in tune. At some point some one best the high E string tuner but that had to have been a user operated error.

got them in, guess the re-issues are metric sized?