Adventures in friction tuners

Had a set of Ping tuners on my vintage Martin soprano. They were ok, held fine, but were a bit jerky, with some grinding. They were starting to get annoying. Then I got a set of frictions on eBay from Taiwan, these are the ones Ken Timms uses on his sopranos, and are probably knockoffs of Grover 6 tuners.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Nickel-pla...var=630723438395&_trksid=p2057872.m2749.l2649

Each tuner has 9 parts total, including 2 silicone washers. The Pings have 5 parts each, with no washers. When I installed the first one, I realized that the screws were too short, and would not grab the post..big bummer there. The screws were metric M3 thread size, but only about 15mm long. I was surprised that these tuners came with such short screws, and would not work with my Martin, since its headstock is only 11.5 mm thick. My local hardware store had M3 x 20mm machine screws, so I bought 4, but they were not stainless steel. I installed the first tuner with the new screw, and it fit and worked fine. Then I realized that the stainless steel screws from the Pings were also M3 x 20mm, so I used those instead, since they look better than non-stainless. I did need to open up the front holes just a tiny bit to accept the new bushings, but this uke is no museum piece, with plenty of previous repairs.

Anyway, they turn very smoothly, hold well and look good, after I got the screw issue sorted out. I had Grover 6 pegs on another uke in the past, and like these ones better than the Grovers. Like the Grovers, the posts are shorter than the Ping posts above the headstock, and they stick out further in the back than the Pings, with bigger buttons. I always thought I preferred smaller buttons, but the bigger ones are certainly easier to grab and twist. I had been thinking of getting a set of black Gotoh UPTs for this uke, but these frictions are so smooth and accurate, I don't feel the need anymore.

First pic below shows these tuners (black) vs Pings (white). Top shows the short screws these came with, and one of the non-stainless 20mm screws I bought to replace them, before reusing the longer Ping stainless screws.


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Last pic is a set of these on one of Ken's ukes:

Nice! I thought the Timms were Der Jung, but not because I know anything. I just assumed since other UK builders use them.

I have a Martin with tuners I'm ambivalent about. I've thought about installing upgrades, and then putting the old ones on a Bruko, which has tuners that work fine, but feel cheap. But I'm worried about having to do more than just take things apart and put things together. And now's kind of a less than ideal time for taking it to a shop if things go awry.

Thanks for the link, pics, and write-up. It's helpful to see someone else tackling a job I'm thinking about.

The buttons on friction tuners indeed matter. My favourite friction tuners so far are probably the KoAloha stock tuners. Not only are the tuners themselves good quality but the buttons are fairly large (and beautiful) which means you can get proper torque when tuning. I had the complete opposite experience with my vintage Martin which came with Grover Champion friction pegs (not original, obviously). Those tuners are decent quality as well but the buttons are way too small so tuning accurately is a real pain.

They look great. Decent friction pegs are a pleasure to use.