Just having a quiet afternoon of mandolin maintenance which has given me time for thought.
Over the years, I’ve acquired quite a few instruments; I’ve tended to simply buy another, can’t remember ever trading one in, and, consequently, I’ve had a good selection of tuners to peruse.
It’s clear that some people agonise over the choice of tuner but I already have most of them. I’ve experienced the benefits of Allesi and Waverley, been reasonably satisfied with Schaller, appreciated the StewMac “Restoration” tuners and been delighted to replace a set of GA’s with a special order set of Robson.
The ones which work best, however, are on my cheapest mandolin - a Fylde - which I picked up at auction just over 3 yeras ago. For those who don’t know, Fylde is run by Roger Bucknell MBE, a UK guitar builder - you can tell becuse he annoyingly always puts a fret marker on the 9th fret!
You can also tell because he uses mini-guitar tuners rather than specific mandolin tuners - in my cas made by Gotho.
So, to get to the point, why have other builders not gone the same way? They’re smooth, hold their tune impeccably and need no maintenance. If you were to fit them closer together than on my instrument, they’d have the same post spacing as normal mandolin tuners. Is it purely down to tradition?
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