Harmony Batwing tuners

[Jerry G. Brown]

<Removed by Moderator. Please limit commerce to the classifieds>

[MikeEdgerton]

If you're talking about these tuners they used to show up now and again brand new on eBay. I sold the last set I had a few years back to someone on the Cafe. I also seem to recall that they were an odd spacing.

[MikeEdgerton]

And here is a set on eBay. NFI

https://www.ebay.com/itm/23429512988...MAAOSwhedhl-CV

[Jerry G. Brown]

Thanks,MikeEdgerton- I saw those but didn't like the profiteer's price

[MikeEdgerton]

I paid that much for a set years ago and sold it for more. I guess I'm a profiteer. Good luck.

[MikeEdgerton]

Another way to approach this is to look for Harmony A style mandolins from the 60's. If they are late 60's early 70's they will probably have those tuners. Buy the mandolin, strip off the tuners and hopefully the tailpiece and cover and sell the carcass. The real money is in the tailpiece with the cover.

[mrmando]

Are those really Waverlys? I thought they were Grovers.

[MikeEdgerton]

The sets I had were in numbered Grover boxes but there is one member that thinks they are Waverly. I think they were made by Grover but I have an eraser on my pencil that is well worn.

[NickR]

I thought they were Waverly as I had seen them for sale described as such. It appears that Waverly sold out to Stewart-Macdonald in about 1970 and one assumes that Harmony had a stock of Waverly mandolin tuners that lasted for a while. These tuners appeared very late in the life of the company and it is probable that this style (which appear to be similar in terms of the plate shape) were in fact made by Grover- not least if new examples came in a Grover box. It seems that Grover did not make mandolin tuners for many years. I have seen a late 1930s Gibson A model with them which suggests that at the time Gibson was looking at moving from Waverly, Grover made some mandolin tuners for Gibson but Gibson- like so many other companies in the late 30s moved to Kluson- as Harmony and Kay did shortly afterwards.

[MikeEdgerton]

I think that is kind of skewed but I could be wrong. Stewmac started out in 1969 if I recall but I don't think they would have been buying brand names or acquiring companies in those first ten years. They built a nice business over the years. I don't recall seeing any Waverly offerings until the modern Stewmac started selling guitar tuners closer to the 2000's than the 70's. Again, I could be wrong. I don't think that has any real bearing on this conversation.

When Harmony closed down and in the years following they were liquidated through auctions and such. There were quantities of hardware that seemed to find its way into the market and they were still being sold on eBay in the late 90's early 2000's in the box as NOS. That's when I bought the sets I had. There was a whole lot of the stuff that came out of Regal and even Kay that just appeared. It's the way it was. The tuners were in Grover boxes that I had. Perhaps someone bought them in bulk and also bought the boxes, I really don't know.

If you pour through mugwumps.com you can find several mentions by Mike Holmes of Grover, Waverly and Elton being the primary manufacturers of hardware and accessories in the early 1900's and on. At some point Kluson entered that fray and I'm sure that there were things that happened within the industry where one company bought out another. What we now know as the Waverly brand has little or no connection to the old brand with the same name. Grover may or may not be the same company and I have no idea about Elton.

So were these made by Grover or Waverly? All I can go buy is the boxes I had in my hand but I am open to change in the face of real documentation and unfortunately that doesn't include what a guy selling a set on an auction site says. I do love catalog pictures that can be dated though and if I could find these tuners on any catalog page that showed them as Waverly made I'd probably get real excited.

[NickR]

I had assumed they were Waverly- especially as the plates were the same shape- and those sellers that quoted Waverly. I had seen that comment by Michael Holmes and as you point out, he mentions the company being active in the1970s but had itself been up for sale since 1970- so the date of the sale is not clear. I suppose it is possible that someone had acquired boxes and also tuners and put the tuners into the Grover boxes as so much stock was bought after Harmony closed and gradually made its way to the market. You do see the earlier (definitely Waverly) version for sale and the box is branded Harmony- not Waverly. I suppose one has to keep an open mind on which firm made them until something definite is seen that nails it down. One thing for sure, is that this version was used at the tail end of Harmony's existence but that does identify the maker.

[Jeff Mando]

....I guess I'm a profiteer. Good luck.

I'm a profiteer, too. And, on a good day -- I'm a BIG profiteer! The way I look at it is that eBay is a worldwide marketplace for vintage instruments and parts for those instruments, at least that is what I look for. For the potential buyer, all you do is type in what you are looking for and like magic -- there it is! If you don't like the price, keep in mind you are not only paying for the item, but the convenience of BEING ABLE TO LOCATE IT. And for that, IMHO, the seller is entitled to a "profit." Kind of like a built-in "finders fee" that the customer pays.

Another way to look at it is, you can take your time and go to every music store in your town and not find what you are looking for. Then you can take more time and go to every music store in your state and not find it, either. You can also go to pawn shops, thrift stores, yard sales, junk shops, and church sales -- and not be able to find it....well, you WILL FIND IT, eventually, but it may take 10-15 years doing it that way. As an eBay seller, that is what I do and I consider the shopping and driving around with my dog the fun part of the process, and mostly I strike out, but once in a while I find something I can list on eBay and hopefully make a profit. And, yes, when I find it I will find it at a CHEAP price. Of course, any ACTUAL profit comes after you subtract the gas, food, motels, etc., that it took to find the item.
Kinda makes the eBay price seem like a bargain, doesn't it? No rant, just an opinion...

Another way of looking at it is Harmony Batwing asking prices continue to rise, so putting original tuners back on it might be a sound investment at resale time.

I should add that prior to working at a vintage guitar shop, most of my instruments came from thrift stores, pawn shops, and yard sales. In fact, I was very much "anti-retail" in my thinking. Since working there, I began to see the value in buying from people who actually knew what they were talking about. Sure, the prices were higher, but the instruments were also better quality.

Onto the Waverly, Grover, Kluson debate.....

I agree with Mike that the current Waverly brand that produces "boutique" quality tuners has nothing to do with the old company that produced countless thousands of "utility grade" tuners for entry and mid-level instruments.

I also agree that you can't go by the description of some eBay seller who may have gotten his information for some other eBay ad he saw. He might be 14 years old and trying to appear more knowledgeable than his experience might allow.

I'm not sure who made the tuners in question. As previously mentioned, brand new sets of vintage tuners show up for sale on a regular basis. These are usually in a Harmony labeled box, with no info as to who actually the manufacturer was. Tuners with the same rounded "bell-shaped" ends are often described by sellers as Waverly-made. Gretsch guitars of the 50's and 60's used individual tuning machines with this same shape. Some of the better Harmony guitars, as well. eBay sellers call these Waverly tuners, but I don't know where they got their info. Agree that seeing an old Waverly or Grover catalog picturing these might go a long way to a better identification.

[Denis Kearns]

I don’t have a problem with folks making a reasonable return on their investment, it’s the ones that cannibalize perfectly good instruments because they figure they can make a little more money by selling the parts.

[MikeEdgerton]

I don’t have a problem with folks making a reasonable return on their investment, it’s the ones that cannibalize perfectly good instruments because they figure they can make a little more money by selling the parts.

I didn't realize that was against the law. I have no problem with it. The people that buy the pieces are generally people that need those pieces to keep their instruments playable. It's that way in this industry and has been forever as it is in many industries. If a person has an instrument they've had for decades and suddenly can't buy a tailpiece that they need to keep that going they should just get rid of it? I am thankful there are people that are willing to commit this awful offense.

[Jeff Mando]

FWIW, I was working at a vintage guitar shop about 25 years ago -- great job, hard to call playing with guitars all day "work!" Anyway, back then there were two kinds of vintage guitars -- guitars that were super clean, near mint, all original and then there were guitars that were refinished, headstock repaired, changed parts, etc. The super clean guitars were what collectors focused on. The worn vintage guitars were very, very hard to sell. For example, a nice clean 50's Fender Stratocaster was selling for $25,000 and up, while a "players grade" 50's strat sold for $3500 -- and for years that is how the business worked. The players grade instruments usually sold to working musicians who wanted the vintage sound, although most couldn't even afford $3500, sad to say.

With the advent of the internet, specifically eBay, "unsellable" instruments suddenly had a market. First, things that were hanging on the wall for years sold in just a week by auction and often for more than the original asking price. THEN, some genius discovered the parts from a beat-up 50's strat were the SAME as the parts on a mint condition strat and overnight a $3500 "hard to sell" guitar became worth about $12,000 in parts -- and the stuff sold very quickly on eBay! Then they went down the line, sellers found a refinished Fender Mustang could be bought for $450 and contained about $1200 in parts! Needless to say, people got rich overnight because a brand new area of the vintage guitar market was now open.

First, the name brand stuff, mostly electrics, began to be parted out. Some acoustics, but most acoustics didn't contain enough "parts" that could be removed and resold easily. Eventually, it trickled down to cheapo guitars that were undesirable, but still contained parts that could be upcycled to more expensive instruments needed a certain bridge, pickup, tailpiece, tuners, pickguard, etc. Like Mike said, the goal was always to keep the nice guitars in service by providing a source of parts. Obviously, you can't find this stuff at the local hardware store!

So, in my mind, the mint stuff, for the most part, still stayed in one piece. The other stuff got repurposed, mostly due to economics. This was a new source of revenue for some music dealers.

Speaking of economics, a $50 Harmony mandolin that needs $200 worth of repair, for example -- instead of becoming a wall-hanger or thrown away -- becomes a source of parts that may fix two or three mandolins!

I guess everyone needs to apply their own "moral compass" to this question. For me, not a biggee as long as nobody is taking apart museum pieces, which doesn't seem to be the case.

One more, just food for thought....my neighbors, who I don't know, a few houses down had a yard sale and I bought a record album for 50 cents. I then listed it on eBay and sold it for $300. I told my friend about it, expecting a high-five and he responded by saying I screwed my neighbor out of $300 bucks! Different moral compass, he had a problem with it and I slept like a baby.....so?

[Denis Kearns]

Ah yes, I figured that my comment might strike a few nerves. I wasn’t talking about instruments that are basket cases, but perfectly good instruments that have been played, have produced music for decades, and now may be a little worn or in need of some repair. I figure that reasonably decent instruments, like many Harmony guitars and mandolins, have survived for 70 years or more and deserve some respect. They also deserve to be maintained or repaired, if need be. My problem is with the folks that routinely take perfectly decent or lower-end instruments and strip them to make a few more bucks. Not everyone can afford museum pieces or “Loar era” Gibsons and too many decisions are made these days simply based on a person’s ability to accumulate money or the (artificial) monetary value of something. I prefer to base my actions on different criteria. I am definitely not a good business person.

And I wasn’t discussing the law here (have a daughter I can do that with), just stating a personal opinion and a sadness at the loss of some of our musical history. I appreciate the responses and the differences of opinion and, I too, have occasionally purchased parts of unknown provenance to repair an instrument. That being said, I’m very glad that I was able to buy some snazzy new Rubner tuners for my Strad-O-Lin!

Thanks to this community of interesting folks!

- Denis

[MikeEdgerton]

As a guy that was buying those Harmony instruments when they were new I can assure you nobody is being harmed because someone took a tailpiece off their Harmony to keep their Strad-O-Lin original and in doing so removed a mandolin that wasn't much to begin with from the gene pool. I also don't have a problem with people that use non-original equipment on their instruments because I love hotrods and I believe that if you own it you're free to do with it as you will as you have done when you defiled your vintage Strad-O-Lin with those Rubner tuners. If someone owns a perfectly good mandolin and wants to part it out then I don't see any reason why they shouldn't.

[Denis Kearns]

……I believe that if you own it you're free to do with it as you will as you have done when you defiled your vintage Strad-O-Lin with those Rubner tuners. …….

Mike, I still keep the original Strad-O-Lin tuners with the mando and the installation of the Rubners involved no alteration of the headstock. After I cleaned and reassembled the original tuners, they continued to be an issue, so I decided to go with the Rubners. I don’t consider it a defilement, since it restored the playability of the instrument; a subsequent owner will be able to put the originals back on, if they so desire. I did not take the original tuners off to sell them, but rather, because they were non-operational. As long as they work reasonably well, I prefer to keep the original tuners on an instrument. From previous posts on MandolinCafe, it seems that tuner performance was a recurring problem with some of these Strad-O-Lins.

And Rubners are really nice tuners. I also got a set for a 1930’s Harmony guitar that came with a mixed set of tuner types (and only 5!). The Rubners, because anything like the original style are few and far between and really expensive. And with a Harmony, sometimes it can be a little difficult telling exactly what was the original type of hardware.

Some of my instruments are older than I am. I figure that I’m just the caretaker while I’m here and would like to think that they will be still be making music for another century or two after I’ve gone to the worms.

- Denis

I should be playing my Strad-O-Lin………..

[MikeEdgerton]

Mike, I still keep the original Strad-O-Lin tuners with the mando and the installation of the Rubners involved no alteration of the headstock. After I cleaned and reassembled the original tuners, they continued to be an issue, so I decided to go with the Rubners. I don’t consider it a defilement, since it restored the playability of the instrument; a subsequent owner will be able to put the originals back on, if they so desire. I did not take the original tuners off to sell them, but rather, because they were non-operational. As long as they work reasonably well, I prefer to keep the original tuners on an instrument. From previous posts on MandolinCafe, it seems that tuner performance was a recurring problem with some of these Strad-O-Lins.

And Rubners are really nice tuners. I also got a set for a 1930’s Harmony guitar that came with a mixed set of tuner types (and only 5!). The Rubners, because anything like the original style are few and far between and really expensive. And with a Harmony, sometimes it can be a little difficult telling exactly what was the original type of hardware.

Some of my instruments are older than I am. I figure that I’m just the caretaker while I’m here and would like to think that they will be still be making music for another century or two after I’ve gone to the worms.

- Denis

I should be playing my Strad-O-Lin………..

I'm pretty sure I knew all that. You can choose to be a caretaker. Others see the instrument simply as a tool.