Gotoh Tuners in MM headstock?

If you can find a thin bushing you can put that in the holes to widen them a bit. @JIO did this a while back, but I forget which bass...

 

If you can find sleeves (in a hardware store) that will work, you can do that - but either that or filling the holes with dowels/plugs will visually depend on the larger perimeter being covered by the tuner ferrule. I used the sleeve concept once but it's not ideal. If I had to do it now, I'd use the plug concept - but realize that even if you do a seamless filler/patch job that it will ghost through eventually. My overview recommendation is to find tuners you can live with that have the correct size posts.

 

Thinking about this a bit, because I can't recall installing Gotoh clovers...like ever?

The 14mm is for the post - you'll have to have at least an 18mm hole to fit the bushing around the post into it, no?

 

On the Gotoh site, they show the pillar diameter as 14mm, and the bushing OD as 17.6mm. (I'm assuming you're looking at GB640 s)
GB640 - G-GOTOH



Edit: Any Gotoh supplier should be able to put in a custom order for you to get them in L or R and in Cosmo Black. I've waited roughly 3 months anytime I've put in a specific order with my local supplier.

 

I think we need a double-check on which Gotohs you are talking about. Per Beej's post above, their open-gear cloverleaf style has a 14mm post but a bushing to fit in the hole size you already have (18mm or roughly 23/32"). Whereas (slightly confusingly) their smaller tuners, like the gb707, have a smaller 11mm post and a 14mm bushing and need a 14mm hole.



Hipshot make conversion bushings meant to adapt a smaller post to a larger hole, but I don't know if the posts for the gb707 style gotoh are compatible with hipshot thread sizes, and they're not available in cosmo black anyways.

I can't really picture how a sleeve would work, considering the nut/washer on the gb707 isn't big enough to confidently span an 18mm hole, so you're relying on the fit of the bushing in the hole to keep it in the head. Unless you add a larger washer, which again gets you a mismatch in color.

If you're actually planning on using the smaller 11mm posts with 14mm bushings (like the gb707) then I would agree that plugging and redrilling is probably the best bet.