Are Grover 85B tuners still any good?

I’m wondering if I may have been sold fakes or if Grover manufacturing standards have fallen. If it's the latter, I don’t want to throw any more money away. Has anyone used 85B tuners recently and found them to be good?

About 15 years ago, I put a set of these on a second hand uke and LOVED them. I purchased another set on EBay for my current tenor build and they're terrible. They look more or less as I remembered but the holes for the strings have a nasty burr, they won’t hold tension unless they're too tight to move and they have an unimpressive amount of play/backlash.

The transaction seems to be just outside my available eBay purchase history.

Thanks,
Paul

I've distributed the 85B and the slightly longer 88B for 25 years. I have not seen any changes. Some of them come with a zinc slot head screw, and those can be more difficult to tighten. I order them with chrome Phillips head screws which work and look better. Not sure what you mean by backlash. These are straight, no gear machines and backlash only happens if there are gears involved. Did you use new fiber washers? These tuners can be finicky about the type of wood they are used on and the headstock thickness. I have occasionally seen string hole burrs, but a minute with a needle file takes care of that. Good luck with your project!

You'll get a form of backlash with traditional friction tuners if the fit of the knobs to the shafts (often a square hole/square section shaft) is loose. It is very easy to discover and to fix.

However, this should not occur in a good quality product.

John Colter.

As they say in the classics tune up but never tune down.

Yes, these have soft zinc slot heads. The backlash I mentioned is as Ukantor describes - same as you'll find in the adjustment of a hand plane, not "slop" but a looseness in the components. I remembered the previous set feeling much crisper.

I did use the washers and my headstock is a hair over 3/8”, so maybe the oil finish needs to cure more?

Late edit: just dug around and found out they came from StewMac, so I have to assume they're genuine...a bit disappointed that they don’t seems as solid as my first set. I’ll start looking for threads on fixing them to perform better.