New Tuners on Flea

Jerryc41 said:

I'm not a big fan of direct tuners, so I generally put something geared on my Magic Fluke products. This walnut Flea has new tuners I installed this morning.

I found them on Amazon, and I chose them not only because of the wooden knobs but because the screw hole was at a 90° angle to the shaft. If it had been at a wider angle, like most tuners, it would not have lined up with the wood on the headstock. I realized as I was installing them that I could have ground off that piece with the screw hole.

I had to enlarge (reamer) the hole for the shaft quite a bit. I also filed down the three little nubs on the tuners that were supposed to press into the wood to keep the tuner from rotating. A 10 mm wrench is perfect for tightening the collar inside the opening of the headstock. I'm always surprised when I see videos with people using pliers or adjustable wrenches.

I like how they look, and I especially like how they tune the strings now.

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Jddewitt81 said:

Yeah and a good way to bang stuff up. If you don’t have a socket then chances are you can’t use an adjustable wrench with that much care either.

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Bill1 said:

Going back to the tuners.
I roughly measured my Flea and it is about 15mm wide in the headstock. An 8mm hole is just over half the width, leaving about 3.5mm of wood left on either side. I would be worried that its not enough wood to cope with the tension over the next ten years.
Its also not a lot of wood if the headstock gets a serous bump.
As for 10mm spanners or wrenches or whatever you call them in your English dialect. Most tuners use a 10mm nut, it is almost a no-brainer to buy a good quality 10mm spanner or wrench or whatever you call the tool with a 10mm ring on one end and open ended 10mm on the other end. Buy one and keep it with your ukes, to use when needed. There are two good reasons for this: First the fixed tool is much lighter than the adjustable version. Second it presents a low risk of damaging your headstock and hardware when you use it. Noting that 10mm is about 25/64", so often a 24/64" = 3/8" tool will be do the same job as a 10mm tool.

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Jerryc41 said:

As for terminology, I think we should standardize on "spanner wrench," "lorry truck," and "elevator lift" for a start. When it comes to driving, we should start driving in the middle of the road.

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Pirate Jim said:

Wait, you mean I shouldn't have been driving down the middle already? This explains so much...

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Pirate Jim said:

Wait, you mean I shouldn't have been driving down the middle already? This explains so much...

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Ziret said:

I hope you made it home to your flat apartment in time for bisquit cookies.

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Ziret said:

I hope you made it home to your flat apartment in time for bisquit cookies.

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Pirate Jim said:

I also had a few tomatoes from the garden yard. Or is it tomatoes? :uhoh:

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