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Old 02-09-2019, 07:33 PM
Glennwillow Glennwillow is offline
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Location: Coastal Washington State
Posts: 44,924
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I have a 1967 Martin D-35 with Grover Rotomatics. A while ago I decided one was pretty tight, maybe it was worn out, so I replaced the tuners with a set of Gotoh tuners that fit. However, those tuners completely changed the tone of my old D-35 and robbed the guitar of all kinds of bass. Suddenly my old D-35 sounded like a Taylor. My wife immediately asked me, "What happened to your guitar??!!"

So I put the Grovers back on, the bass came back, both my wife and I breathed a sigh of relief, and I put the Gotohs on a drawer, never to be used again. The one Grover tuner that seemed to be tight before wasn't tight anymore after all the turning that had taken place. Those tuners are now 52 years old, and this old D-35 has been used a great deal. It's been refretted twice and partially refretted once. So that's a lot of tuning over the years. This was my only acoustic until 2006, acquired in 1969. So that's 37 years of heavy use.

At the time people on the AGF said that what I described made no sense, that tuners can't change the sound of a guitar. But they did.

- Glenn
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