Looking for tuners for 5/8" (15mm) peghead holes

[sunbeast]

Just bought a vintage "A" Basses fretless neck on Ebay for a project and the tuner holes are 5/8" (or 15mm for metricly-inclined folk) with the single screw hole attachment style (like mini Gotohs, Hipshot ultra-lite, etc...). I've been looking around and have yet to find a tuner to fit such holes. I definitely need a mini-style tuner due to how close together the tuner holes are, but all of the mini-style Gotohs, Grovers, Wilkinsons I have seen available are for 14mm holes at the largest!

Anybody got any ideas?!

Thanks,
Karl

[GlennW]

You could get tuners for 9/16" holes and wrap the bushings with thin metal strips to take up the slack if necessary.

[not_jason]

Originally Posted by GlennW

You could get tuners for 9/16" holes and wrap the bushings with thin metal strips to take up the slack if necessary.

I did something similar on a guitar once using little bits of copper tubing to fill the difference (I was in a jam, it was the best we could come up with). It was a pain in the ass, but it worked.

[Rodent]

is this a CIJ neck? I seem to recall having a similar issue when assembling a CIJ parts bass for a client. in the end I had to order a set of CIJ tuners from eBay seller Stratosphere

all the best,

R

[sunbeast]

Originally Posted by Rodent

is this a CIJ neck? I seem to recall having a similar issue when assembling a CIJ parts bass for a client. in the end I had to order a set of CIJ tuners from eBay seller Stratosphere

all the best,

R

No- its a genuine "A" Basses neck from the 70s made by Albey Balgochian (sic?- made basses for Daryl Jones, Stanley Clarke, etc), I believe in the US. Its actually going to go on that Ibanez that you Darkstar'd for me, Rodent! Something about that bass always screams "fretless" to me when I play it...

Thanks for the suggestions- I want to make sure there aren't any straight alternatives before I do any retrofitting, but I'm certainly not opposed to that! As far as the CIJ tuners- I believe the Fender-style 4 screw tuners would be too big (the tuner holes are closer together than on a Fender), so I need something similar to a Hipshot Ultralite or mini-Gotoh.

Thanks,
Karl

[Rodent]

there are only a few basses that immediately come to mind as my internal reference for what a neck should feel like - and your Ibanez is one of them ... what a sick bass that is!

if you have a large enough drill press, a 5/8" duplicating punch (for alignment), and a 11/16" Forstner bit you could always enlarge the holes slightly if you get in a real bind

all the best,

R

[sunbeast]

Originally Posted by Rodent

there are only a few basses that immediately come to mind as my internal reference for what a neck should feel like - and your Ibanez is one of them ...

I agree- switching necks may be a very short-term prospect! I love that bass to death, especially since adding an Audere JZ3- gives it that little clarity that I was missing with the passive setup and also was the impetus behind making me want to try it fretless. Will be interesting also to see what difference a 34" scale will be (vs. that crazy 33 3/4" scale or whatever the old neck is!)

Karl