Plastic Bushings! Yuck!

[multidon]

So I am playing my Kentucky KM 600 today. I love this mandolin, even though it's my beater, I love how it sounds and plays and it is my primary gigging instrument. I take it to gigs because it looks good, sounds good, and it wasn't expensive so I don't worry about it too much (the Weber stays home mostly these days). So while I'm playing I notice the bushings, to various degrees, are backing out of the holes. Simple fix, I say to myself. It needs new strings anyway so I take off strings and use a c clamp with cauls to ram them back home. All looks well, so I reassemble, string, and while tuning I see the string tension pulling those bushings right back out. So there is definitely more here than meets the eye.

So I disassemble again and paint the inside of the tuner holes with some CA, trying to get a tighter fit. After the CA is cured I ram the bushings home again. This time it seems like a very tight fit, but I notice while I am pressing in on them the "gold plating", if that's what you want to call it, starts peeling off and underneath it's white plastic! So I take them back out again and throw them in the trash. Now my Kentucky is out of commission until I can find the time to install some decent quality metal bushings.

I was very surprised to find these bushings were plastic. Is this common? They don't hold for s!@#$. The tuners themselves seem pretty nice. Gotoh, I think, or close copies. In fact what I have found about this instrument is that, even though it was inexpensive (they were around 700 new, and I paid much less used), most of it is first class. Ebony radiused fingerboard and bridge, gold hardware, solid carved top and back, bone nut. So I find it strange they choose to cheap out on something like bushings. Usually bushings are supplied with the tuners as a set, right? Do Gotoh tuners normally come with plastic bushings? If they do, I would just throw them out and install something else. They really are useless on an instrument IMHO.

[John Arnold]

Do Gotoh tuners normally come with plastic bushings?

Not to my knowledge. I believe this is a case of the beancounters at Saga making a silly choice.

[Ivan Kelsall]

Don - I just gave the Gotoh tuner bushes on my Ellis "A" style a hard scratch with a sharp needle & they're metal.
Apart from cutting cost (maybe), there are sound reasons why 'plastic' (''generic'' term) might be used. If the bushes were of a hard Nylon spec.or of PTFE,they're self-lubricating,a good quality for bushes = no friction. The only downside i can see is that they may have self-lubricated themselves out of the bushing holes !. Nylon & PTFE bushes are used by the millions world wide.
You maybe need to post a pic.of the tuners / back plates on here, so that other Cafe members can help identify the tuners. After that,you need to get replacement bushes,for which you'll need the old ones for comparison,or,a complete new set of tuners.
One of the stores selling Kentucky mandolins may be able to advise you,
Ivan

[multidon]

Here is a picture of the tuners. The knobs are the Gotoh type, with the 2 flat/2 round sided screw holes. But I have never seen Gotohs with the Art Deco diamond pattern on the plates. Also here is a close up shot of the one of the bushings with the gold "plating" (paint?) flaking off, showing the white plastic underneath.

Is there some reason I can't just install new Stew Mac replacement bushings?

[Pete Jenner]

Here are one of the tuner sets from my old Antonio Tsai mandolin. Have yours got that mark on the back? The bushings on those were metal I think but I could be wrong. I chucked them a few years ago.

[multidon]

Pete- Yes! They have the very same mark. Looks like a D with something scribbled inside. Any idea who made them? Certainly not Gotoh, if Tsai uses them. Yours has the black shafts and screws, mine are all gold, otherwise the same.

[Pete Jenner]

No Don, I have no idea who made them. I always assumed they were some generic Chinese tuners.

[sgrexa]

I believe they are Golden Gate tuners made by Saga and are very inexpensive, though I am still surprised the bushings would be plastic. Because they have the gears on top of the shaft, this limits your replacement options somewhat but you should be able to find a suitable replacement. You could probably find metal bushing replacements fairly easily if the tuners are functioning OK otherwise.

Sean

[multidon]

Sgrexa what has the gear orientation to do with the bushing choice? Should not any bushing designed for 1/4 inch shafts work ok?

And if they are Golden Gate, why are they marked with a D instead of, say, a G for Golden Gate or an S for Saga? There I go, looking for logic again. When will I learn?

[sgrexa]

Don,

I was talking about replacing the tuners not the bushings, sorry for the confusion! In fact, I was wrong and it appears your gear configuration is standard. I had a set that looked very similar but were "reverse gear" meaning you tuned up to pitch by turning clockwise which used to drive me nuts! The D stamp could be a factory code and not mean anything to us mere common folk. I think these are the tuners shown in your photo:

http://www.sagamusic.com/products/pr...aspx?item=FM-7

Good luck!

Sean

[Ivan Kelsall]

Hi Don - Yourself & Peter Jenner beat me to it. No Gotoh tuner backplate that i've seen has that design on it. You need to measure the diameter of the tuner posts & the outside diameter of the bushes,with a micrometer in order to know what size bushes you require. Once you've done that,you can set about contacting a few suppliers to see if any are available. Unfortunately,when i've tried to source tuner bits & pieces in the UK,usually the only option is to replace the whole set,as the manufacturers won't supply things like tuner buttons as a separate item. I sincerely hope that things are different in the US. My first call would be to StewMac & i'd take it from there,
Ivan

[zedmando]

I've had a similar experience, but with a guitar--it had Gotoh tuners
The whole casing of the tuners was plastic, and of course it cracked where it was inside the headstock--and the tuner wouldn't hold the pitch.
At first it was just one string, but later 2 or 3 others cracked.
I got metal casings for the set I replaced them with--and no tuning issues.

While plastic works for some instrument parts--it isn't the right choice for others.

[Frank Ford]

It's always about the money.

We've seen plastic tuner trim washers and bushings on various lower priced instruments for decades now. Any time there are large quantities involved, it's possible to save a bit here and there by specifying lower cost component parts.

[multidon]

Well, to update. The Stew Mac bushings (intended obviously for guitar, as they come in sets of 6) came today and were way too big. I could have reamed away a lot of wood and made them work. But I didn't want to chance that I might throw off the spacing by taking away so much wood. So I will send them back.

To get my mandolin playing again I decided to go ahead and do what I probably should have done in the first place. I had an extra set of bushings from a set of Stew Mac Golden Age tuners that I ended up not using. They fit the existing holes pretty well. I only had to ream a tiny bit. But I was reluctant to use them because they are nickel and do not match the rest of the gold hardware. At the end of the day I asked myself what was more important, a minor cosmetic detail or functionality. Of course functionality wins and the bushings are metal, a nice tight fit, not going anywhere and the tuners are functioning just fine. As a side note, I am happy to find out they are Golden Gate. They look nice and seem to function just as well as Grovers or Gotohs.

I never was able to find a source of replacement bushings that are mandolin sized in gold. The only gold ones I could find at Stew Mac and All Parts were the guitar sized ones in sets of six. Too late now, but for future reference, is there a source I missed?

[Bill Snyder]

Stew Mac does sell these and here are the specs. Are these the ones you got?

[multidon]

No, I bought the ones called "vintage style." Specs say .340 inch diameter. Much too big. The 1920 style knurled aren't that much different at .336. The smooth ones are smaller but the specs say the fit has to be exact, since they are smooth and have no knurling to hold them in. Plus, the 1920 styles don't come in gold. The ones I ended up using are the ones they supply with Golden Age tuners, but those don't seem to be available separately.

[Bill Snyder]

Well if the size is wrong it is a moot point but they do show the 1920's style in gold.

[multidon]

Yes Bill, the smooth ones come in gold. But the description warns that the holes have to be very exact or there may be problems with them holding. I wanted knurled since I was replacing knurled but those only come in relic nickel, bright nickel, and relic brass.

[Bill Snyder]

Sorry Don, in my haste this morning and using a small tablet instead of the PC (hey I need some type of excuse) I did not catch that.