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How Would You Repair These Tuner Holes ?


ward

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It's quite a common repair, however not the easiest to perform. The simplest part is drilling out the holes, dowelling with Maple and redrilling for the tuners. The most difficult is creating setting dowels that have a more or less common cut and grain pattern, yellowing the wood to match the tint of older Maple and repairing the finish to match the aged lacquer. All without being too invasive! Some people make their reputations and careers out of repairs like this.

The alternatives to repairs mostly concentrate on hiding the damage. Tuners which use screw fit bushings rather than press fit tend to be wider and more likely to cover the damage. The downside is that other tuners might use different bore sizes and rear mounting screw/pin locations. Hipshot are just launching a universal plate which prevents this problem, if that is of interest.

What is your main intent with the repair, which I presume is where the question was coming from? If it is to restore the instrument to original condition or as close to it as possible, then I would seek out a local (reputable and insured) repair tech to fix the structural damage and the cosmetics in order to protect the instrument's worth. Appropriate care. If this instrument is not worth that much and will not be (vintage instruments were not vintage several decades ago and have all manner of bad repairs done on that basis, damaging future worth) then roll up your sleeves!

A bit more info such as the instrument's provenance will be useful before a confident recommendation can be given....I don't think I would recommend drilling out the headstock of a 50s Strat and whacking in some randomly-selected Maple of course!! :peace

edit: Actually, a second look at the photo makes it look less structural than it could be. It is possible to disguise the exposed Maple and scratches however again these could potentially be bad options in the longer term for a more valuable or potentially valuable instrument.

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Thanks,

I'm quit sure it's not a valuable instrument.

It's a stratcopy or strat pieced together by someone.

It has seen a lot of (ugly) modifications in it's life.

Most of those are hidden, the headstock is the only thing I wanna repair. (or hide)

(I have a thread here in the hope of finding out it's origin.

But I'll probably never find out where it came from or when it was built.)

Thanks for your recommendations.

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