'03 Gibson Thunderbird IV - fitting vintage tuners
hello all @ TalkBass, here's my first post!
I feel like the vintage T-birds looked tremendously better with the massive old school tuners which looked so similar to what Fender was using. I don't know why they went to the Gotoh looking stuff in drab black in the 90's.
I'd really like to retrofit my reissue Thunderbird with some proper tuners such as what could be seen on the 1976-1979 models. I'm guessing these were Kluson? It's no problem stepping up the hole sizes in my reissue.
The 1st question is, are the holes laid out with the same spacing as the original 70's T-birds?
Secondly, what product should I use? I don't think the Hipshot HB3 will work, but am uncertain. The tuners were fairly closely spaced as can be seen on this 1979 headstock.
Has anything like this ever come up before? I wonder why the bloody heck Gibson just doesn't do a full 70's reissue of the T-Bird. Everyone would have to have one.
Don't know about the "real deal" but I had the same idea about my Epi T-Bird and bought a set of black Gibson "elephant ear" open gear machine heads for it.
They didn't fit. Nowhere near even . The post spacing is much closer in the enclosed ones.
You can always try to hunt down replacement or custom buttons for the existing tuners if the open gearing is not that important.
We may get lucky with these Hipshot HB6Y tuners. I think they would fit in the Gotoh spacing. I'm beginning to wonder if reissue T-birds even have the same headstock shape / dimensions that the originals did.
Is there anyone out there that would be willing to provide us with measurements so we can know definitively?
Last edited by CountryScience : 06-10-2009 at 05:27 AM.
I just got 2 of the new Non-Reverse Thunderbirds (Tobacco and Pelham). Does anybody know if the new HB6C - 1/2'' Clover Key Ultralite tuners will work?
Yes just letting you guys know that the Hipshot HB6C 3/8 tuners do fit the new non reverse thunderbird.....but you need to make sure they are the 3/8 version because you will need the extra room in headstock hole to shift the tuner around so the keys don't hit themselves when you turn them.
to TalkBass.
. The post spacing is much closer in the enclosed ones.
