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My curiosity got me to wondering if I could disassemble a closed (Grover-like) tuner and maybe clean it up and lubricate it a bit. Well, I took the knob and washers off a tuner, and I could push the shaft the knob came off of a bit. Hmmm...so I tried to see if I could push the fretwire shaft a bit. Nothing doing.

So... are these tuners able to be taken apart, or once the end cap is pressed on, no more messing around inside?

Thanks for any insight/comments/warnings/advice (yeah, I know, go do something worthwhile).

Much obliged.

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Peter Havriluk

I used to take the back cover off by pressing down on one side while using a sharp tool on the other. However, it's been a long time since I had to do it...

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

It does come off, but there's a good risk of scratching it.


Pierre
Guitares Torvisse

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Pierre Castonguay

I’ve never been able to take one off clean. Always left a mark.

Re: exploratory surgery
Some of the cheap Chinese closed back tuner cover caps remind me of the punch line of the joke about the oriental medicine doctor - "cut cut cut - that's all American doctors know - cut cut cut! Wait 3 day - it fall off."
Some of the closed back tuners, and most of the open back tuners allow you to change them from right side to left side.

You might be able to soak it in solvent for a few hours to dissolve and remove the old grease. Hit it with some compressed air, then try to pack some new grease into it.

I've not done this with a tuner, but I have with similar pressed in covers. Tuner covers are not that tight as they press further in easily. Glue on a dowel with your reversible glue of choice. Pull out the pressed in cover. De-glue the dowel.

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Trevor Gore, Luthier. Australian hand made acoustic guitars, classical guitars; custom guitar design and build; guitar design instruction.

http://www.goreguitars.com.au

They are not easily serviced in favor or replacement, sadly.

Throw away society, also sadly.

The good news is that in terms of inflation Grover-like (and Grover) tuners are a pretty good deal considering that they were (Grovers) $65 in 1977 which Google just told me would be about $320 today.

Some others such as Kluson that used to have backs that you could remove and repack them with grease the backs are cast now and the tabs break right off if you try to do this.

Again not intended, anymore... to be serviced.

It's a problem for many who lose a tuner and then find they really have to buy a set of six to replace one. Might be a good business model for someone to break up sets and sell individuals at say half the price of a set. For a while anyway until others started doing it too.

I do, in fact, do this - it started when a customer wanted a single Gotoh 510, I had a set in stock and they balked at the price. So I sold them a single from the set, gambling that as a common tuner I’d be able to use the rest on future repairs and charge a fair price. And I have, although it took a year or more, I eventually turned a profit on the full set vs selling them together. And I still have one left! I no longer hesitate to split an in-stock set of tuners as long they are something relatively common - eg a chrome kluson, or grover rotomatics etc. In my experience it is far more common that one or two tuners fail and need replacing, only rarely are all six kaput.

Customers appreciate getting in and out of the workshop with a nice low parts bill so it’s win-win.

I've been able to buy single tuning machines on Squeebay and Treeverb for over 10 years, Hesh.

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

Thanks, folks. I wanted to explore and learn what goes on inside and if cleaning and lubricating would offer any improvement to an inexpensive tuner. I'm not trying to salvage old tuners, just trying to learn how they work and whether repacking inexpensive tuners helped them any.

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Peter Havriluk

Another way to approach it is to consider what other combinations of tuners you can use. Since I build some unusual instruments I might use 8 tuners on one instrument (octave mandolin) and four tuners on another (tenor guitar) so buying two sets of guitar tuners will work out.

A decade ago I bought a dozen sets of cheap Chinese closed back tuners for a bunch of stick dulcimers I was knocking together. Aside from the cover caps spontaneously falling off, the mesh of the worm and cog was sloppy and some of them just didn't work right. No amount of grease would help them. I think they were $3 a set so some failures could be tolerated.
I have had better luck with the cheap open back tuners (again on cheap and cheerful instruments like stick dulcimers and cigar box ukes). With open back tuners the mesh of the gears can be adjusted by tweaking the "posts" that hold the worm. Most of the really cheap stuff wears loose from use, but with judicious tapping here and there can be made to work for several years.