Faulty Schaller Tuners

flip-guitar

Hi all,

I bought some Schaller Selmer Deluxe tuners in September and after I had fitted them I noticed a rattle, a loud obtrusive rattle, un-usable.

Turns out that the post between the tuner button and the body of the machine head is not a solid post as per original Selmers, Millers, Dupont etc. The post is surrounded by a sleeve shaped to look like the original posts.....if that makes sense.

The A string 'sleeve' was not tight and this was the cause of the rattle. The tuners where sent back but the (UK) supplier had no more stock so had to wait for a replacement. After two months (!!) the supplier had their workshop repair the tuners and sent them back to me. One week later the rattle was back on the A string AND the G string.

As they still had no replacements I returned for a refund and got another set from a different European shop......same problem, different strings!!

Either I am really unlucky, the factory molds for these parts have worn over the few of years the tuners have been around or they are inherently faulty.

Anyone else having/had problems with these?

Bob Holo

I've seen it happen before, but I've never heard of it happening in that frequency, so either you just experienced a statistical anomaly or maybe they had a crimping machine go out of adjustment. Tough to tell. If there was an issue, then somewhere there is likely a young product manager losing sleep over this as we speak.. being part Sherlock Holmes and part Frequent Flyer.

When I encountered this, I primed the area between the knob and sleeve with thinned cyanoacrylate (which wicks up into the sleeve) and then daubed a small dot of medium density cyanoacrylate to flow around the base where the finial of the sleeve meets the knob - to seal the area. The thinned glue draws the medium in enough to become invisible. Then accelerate the cyano to lock things up. It's perhaps overkill , but it works. Alternately - a drop of any common superglue where the knob meets the sleeve finial will do the trick If you don't have multiple viscosities of acrylate and accelerator. Better yet, take it to a good repair guy. They know 1,000 things that can cause a buzz and 10,000 ways to fix them.

flip-guitar

Thanks Bob, that's what I needed, someone who had experienced this and has a proven and relatively simple fix. Replacement set on the way, hopefully third time lucky.

Dragonmaster

Thank you for the expertise Bob, I just encountered the same problem with a nickel coated set, 5 of the 6 finials were rattling. The cyano glue 10 and 20 with accelerator worked perfectly. Saved me a lot of time and headaches.

Bob Holo

You're welcome. It's a handy trick. I've started just prophylactically sealing all tuner shaft sleeves/finials, and also tacking the corners of tailpiece inserts with little daubs of semi-rigid glue (e6000 / binding cement / etc.) It cuts down on the number of little periodic repairs that guitars need over the years.