My point, really, was that I felt like I was getting reamed a few months ago by at least one advocate of cheap-ass ukes for daring to suggest that it's perfectly legit to pay more than $500.00 for a uke. There was a wave of anti-hand-made uke sentiment that I, frankly, found rather off-putting, so it's with some degree of amusement that I see a thread advocating or at least talking about tuning gears that cost more than a lot of the habituees of the UU feel is proper to spend on an entire uke. So here we are mentioning Gotohs, and Gilberts, and Hipshots, and Rodgers
http://www.rodgers-tuning-machines.com/ (start at about $400.00 for a cheap uke set!), and I'm sort of waiting for the Thrifty People's Police to show up and start ranting about how decadent we are.
So what do you need? Well, most planetaries are 4:1, though Bill Rickard, a banjo parts maker in Canada, is working on 6:1s. From my point of view, if you can't tune your uke with 4:1 tuners, then either you need to polish the nut slots better or practice more. Geared tuners tend to start at about 12:1 and go up from there. I see no great advantage to the higher gear ratios, but I personally like the way geared tuners look on my particular peghead. The fact is that with my personal uke, I hardly ever have to tune it very much once the strings are broken in.
I've used PegHeds and like them a lot; I have them on my S.S. Stewart "Lady Stewart" 5 string banjo which I keep strung with nylon strings. I may choose to use them on another personal uke. The new small Gotohs look just great, too, and they certainly are light weight. For slot head ukes, I love the Rubner tuners from Rosette Guitar Products, and we used a custom set on a banjo for my son, too. They're beautifully made, turn well, and just look right. They'll also do custom spacing on the plates...a big plus...and they'll make custom numbers of strings per plate. You want a nine string slot head uke? Rubner tuners. I've used Gilberts on some guitars, and mechanically, they're a wonder, though they certainly don't look traditional.
As to what we use the most, and all that, well most of our ukes are not in the $2,500.00 range. Interestingly, most of the ukes we sell retail in the $1,600.00 to $1,700.00 bracket, though we make ukes down in the $1,200.00 area, too; we just don't sell many. It seems that if folks can afford a $1,200.00 uke, they can afford a $1,700.00 uke with more detailing and custom US made features. Fine by me.
What we normally use is 4 tuners out of these 6 string sets:
http://www.allparts.com/search.asp?search=&keyword=Gotoh+Butterbean (TK-7810-001 Gotoh 3x3 Open Gear Keys Nickel) these being fairly typical. We often go with some of the plating upgrades...Gotoh's "antique" nickel and gold are really gorgeous. So we're in at about $65.00 to $80.00 (retail) worth of tuners on a uke. And yeah, that back to being what some folks think is the right price for an entire uke!
Some of the high end of tuners are really about being beyond just gear ratios and smooth turning; they're jewelry, and there's nothing wrong with that. So is Chuck Moore's fabulous inlay work. Why not have well crafted and artistically made stuff in your life?
if they were hipshot they were different color than your gold ones...
