machines with ebony buttons?

[mercy]

What tuning machines have or can have ebony buttons? Ive got a guitar coming and need to know the options.

[Picker2]

I ordered replacement ebony buttons at Stewart MacDonalds. They had them for various tuner brands a few years ago.

Note that going from metal tuner buttons to ebony will bring a subtle change in tone to your guitar, at least in my case (all Taylor grand concerts with closed headstocks). It's comparable to the difference between an open head stock and a closed head stock, and probably has to do with the reduced weight changing wave reflections of the strings at the headstock. It's subtle, but I could hear it.

[Nctom]

Depending on what tuners come on your guitar, StewMac has replacement ebony buttons. They also have replacement tuners, open or closed back, that vary widely in price but with the buttons you desire.

[Wade Hampton]

Originally Posted by mercy

What tuning machines have or can have ebony buttons? Ive got a guitar coming and need to know the options.

Mercy, Stew Mac has some aftermarket tuner button options, but the retailer that has the widest selection I've seen anywhere is Allparts:

https://www.allparts.com/buttons

While I have gotten ebony buttons elsewhere, Allparts has so many different varieties that I've barely bothered looking anyplace else in years. In particular, Allparts has the best selection of buttons for Gotoh tuners, and I'm a fan of Gotohs. (I still have Schaller gears on a couple of instruments, but mostly I go for Gotoh.)

What's is important is that you get brand-specific buttons, regardless of what the shape of the button that you want happens to be. You can get Schaller-style and Grover-style buttons to put on Gotohs if you want. The selections for Schaller and Grover tuner buttons aren't as wide as they are for Gotohs at Allparts, but you still have several options for those brands of tuners.

The one thing you want to stay away from is buying buttons from eBay vendors who claim: "Fits Schaller, Gotoh, Grover!!" Unless they inquire what brand of tuner the buttons will be going on when you order, the chances are strong that they'll try to fob off some "One size fits all!" buttons on you.

And if the buttons they sell can actually fit onto all of those different brands, the only way that's possible is that the hole in the button for the tuner shaft is oversized. Which results in crappy tuner accuracy, all sloppy and loose. Because each brand of tuners has its own shaft profile, and the aftermarket buttons need to fit snugly onto those proprietary shaft designs if you want the guitar to tune up properly.

If the fit is loose, tuning accuracy really suffers, so understand that going in.

Anyway, I routinely swap out stock metal tuner buttons with aftermarket buttons because I like the little bit of visual elegance they add, and also appreciate the small amount of weight that gets removed from the headstock that way. I find that my guitars balance somewhat better with the lighter tuner buttons.

Hope that makes sense.


Wade Hampton Miller