Pings tuners on a vintage Martin

Ping tuners on a vintage Martin

Got a set of basic Ping P2698 tuners recently, pretty reasonable at only $15.00. I was hoping they'd fit my 50's Kamaka soprano, where my original buttons are mostly all kaput, but no dice, the Ping post is still too wide for the tiny holes on the Kamaka.

So, I decided to try them on my vintage Martin 0, which has tulip tuners with cracks forming. The tulips look cool, but are very hard to use. They hold well once to pitch, but getting there comes with jerky, grating movements, with cracking sounds. Someone here recommended trying little washers under vintage tuners for smoothness, but those tulip tuners have a little cone on the end, which fits into a little conical hole on the back of the headstock, so adding washers for better operation didn't seem to be possible, since it is not flat under the tuner button. Maybe some peg dope or wax in the holes might have helped, but didn't think of that.

I'd heard that Pings were a drop-in replacement on vintage Martins, with no mods needed. That is true, they drop right in, but you can't use the Ping bushing on the front of the headstock without widening the front holes. However, you can use the original Martin washers there, which fit on the Pings just fine. Gotta say, the Pings operate very smoothly, aided by a washer between the bottom and the wood of the headstock. No mods required, and you can save the old tuners, in case you ever want to reinstall them to make the uke stock again. The posts stick out a bit higher on top, but that doesn't seem to be a problem. I love UPTs even more, but didn't want to mod the old uke.

Thanks for sharing the photos and the info, it’s an education and neat solution.

I hadn’t heard of Ping Tuners before on UU or seen them on eBay. The model you mention is available off of Amazon but I can’t find them in Pings catalogue: http://www.ping-well.com/pingwell/files/assets/common/downloads/pingwell.pdf
Their PT402’s look interesting for other projects but I can’t find them anywhere for sale. Besides the Pings you had being free were there any other reasons why you didn’t use Groovers (off of the top of my head I thought the 2b’s were fairly standard)?

Grover posts are too fat, would need to drill

I try to honor the original design, however if changing the tuners increases the joy of using, that is what it was ment to do.

It would be nice if uke makers and tuner makers could get their act together and decide on a size for the holes. I can understand how Gotoh tuners require a larger hole, but standard tuners should be all one size. I'd think twice - or more - about enlarging the holes in a vintage uke.