i recently just pick up a nice 50's classic players neck off ebay, with no tuners. i bought gotoh vintage style lockers, which said they have 11/32 bushings, upon putting the bushings in they are a tad too small, i need to know what bushings to purchase? do i need the 10mm conversion bushings, even a measurement on the tuner holes would help, any experts out there?

Fender discontinued use of the Gotoh vintage tuners some time ago. Try a set of the newer (and cheaper) Pings -- they use a larger-diameter bushing and should be a drop-in fit.

Arjay

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"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Hi Arjay: so are you saying that the Classic Player has 10 mm / 13/32" pegholes rather than "vintage" 11/32" ones? Interesting: if that's right I'll try and program it into the memory bank for future reference...

Anyhow. Since it sounds like jakenstuff061489 already has a set of vintage spec Gotohs he could use these bushings to fit them to the larger peghole:

http://www.stewmac.com/shopby/item/3458

A word of warning, jakenstuff061489. Don't push very hard to insert those bushings. If they don't slide into the hole firmly but reasonably smoothly you need to enlarge the hole a touch more to take them (odd though that sounds). The reason being, if the fit is too tight then when the wood contracts with changes in the weather it has nowhere to go and can often split around the tuner shaft. Split pegheads are not the end of the world, but they're a pain in the behind and so easy to avoid.

We've even seen a case or two here on the Forum of guys splitting their headstocks by the actual act of forcing tuners into place, when the hole was a shade too small. And also by inserting fixing screws without drilling pilot holes first. Give those ones a miss if possible.

Good luck - C

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I can't say specifically about the new Classic Player models, Ceri. What I do know is this: my 1999 MIM Classic 50's model had the Gotoh vintage repro tuners. When I replaced them with real single-line Klusons, they were a painless drop-in fit. Likewise I've build several clones, using early 2000-ish MIM '50s and '60s necks over the years and all of them afforded a drop-in Kluson replacement. However, necks made after around 2006 or 2007 used a slightly enlarged bushing hole which I attribute to a tuner changeover from Gotoh to Ping. These tuners appear similar to one another but are not interchangeable. Using the Ping bushings in a head stock originally drilled for Gotohs requires shimming the holes and due to differences in the diameters of their string posts, it's not possible to use the Ping bushings with the Gotohs (or Kluson repros). The Pings may have debuted coincident with the release of the Classic Player models.

HTH

Arjay

_________________
"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

The classic Player 50 models are supposed to come stock with Gotoh locking tuners, not pings

Tuning Machines: Vintage Style Locking Tuning Machines

Ping doesn't make vintage style locking tuning machines AFAIK