Desperately Seeking Hardware: 1976 Ibanez F model

[Jeff Mando]

A really great resource, Mandolin Cafe!

[Bernie Daniel]

One of the coolest threads in years! It reads like a good detective story! But in the end the good guys get screwed. In a good way.

[Don]

I just completed my journey in search of tuner button screws for my 1970s era Alvarez F5 style. The original screws were .086 diameter. At the local Fastenal store, the clerk had a flat plastic gizmo with various holes in it. My screw seemed to fit the #2-64 hole pretty good. They didn't keep these in stock and would have to order them. I held off on that. Got some #2-64 anodized brass screws off ebay. The diameter was .080 but they fit pretty good. Ordered these http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00...?ie=UTF8&psc=1 off Amazon, mostly out of curiosity. They came in and measured .080 diameter and worked really well. The Allparts suggestion looked to be a pretty good lead. Anyhow, I'm glad to be done with the screw search. It was a learning experience.

[AlfredPoor]

Thanks for this information, Don. I still plan to get over to Fastenal and have them size the screws for me, and I'll report back. #2-64 certainly sounds plausible; I have no confidence that I could measure the difference between 60 tpi and 64 tpi. I may just get a bunch to test fit myself, just as an experiment.

[jerryk]

I have a 1976 Ibanez that I love dearly. The pearl-oid plastic tabs on the tuner shafts are held in place by tiny brass round-headed machine screws (straight slot head) that screw into the shaft of the tuner.

Apparently, one of them worked loose and fell out. I did not notice until the tab fell off, and a search of the (carpeted) area did not reveal the missing machine screw.

*** Get a super magnet. Run it every which way over the carpet. The errant screw will jump right up onto it. Been there, done that.

- Jerry Kaidor

[AlfredPoor]

Okay, I'm finally reporting back. I made it over to Fastenal today, and I can definitively report that I still don't know what these machine screws are.

I know that they aren't the 2-56 that I got off Amazon. Sadly, neither of the two guys at the sales counter could identify the screw. It was smaller than anything they had in stock. They thought it might be a metric M2, but the smallest they had were M3 screws and hex nuts. It appears that there are different thread pitches available for M2 screws, and they were not able to measure the threads definitively.

So the mystery continues. I may try to order some M2 screws to see if they match up, or maybe find some 2-64 screws to test. But for the moment, I still don't know the specs for these screws.

Stay tuned!

[lenf12]

"The pearl-oid plastic tabs on the tuner shafts are held in place by tiny brass round-headed machine screws".

Jerry, brass is non-magnetic. Just sayin'

Len B.
Clearwater, FL