On the first Friday of October, I came down with a bad cold and found myself with time on my hands so I decided to work on two upgrades to my most inexpensive guitar, the Yamaha C40. I wanted to change the tuners and add a bone saddle.
Here you can see the standard nickel-plated tuners from Yamaha. There's nothing wrong with them; they turn smoothly with no sticking points. They're just plain.
These are the new Hauser-style tuners I wanted to replace them with. These cost me $15 (including shipping) from a Taiwanese vendor on eBay. The barrels are black and the buttons are made of ebony. They have an understated antique look to them.
I've seen these tuners on $1400 guitars that were being sold on CraigsList. It's surprising to think how little they cost.
I bought these bone nuts and saddles from the same vendor who sold me the tuning machines. These eight pieces cost me another $15 complete with shipping. I have bone blanks but working with pre-shaped nuts and saddles would cut down a lot of sanding and filing.
For this project, I chose to work only on the saddle. Shaping the nut would be more work and I wasn't feeling that great.
At the bottom of this photo, you can see the shaped bone saddle. It has a slight radius as recommended by Kenny Hill to accommodate the "livelier" 3rd and 4th strings. At this stage, I kept the saddle at about the same height as the original. I would fine-tune the action later.
The bone was shaped to maximize the strings' break angles. It was smoothed and polished with superfine sandpaper and a buffing compound.
The old tuners were removed and I glued high-quality toothpicks into the screw holes. These will later be cut-off and leveled. Plugging the old holes will ensure that the new screws will go grip the wood securely.
While the glue on the toothpicks was drying, I gave the fretboard and frets a general cleaning and smoothing with 0000 steel wool.
After dusting-off the steel filings, the fretboard is given a light application of fretboard oil and left to soak for about five minutes.
Almost all of the oil was absorbed into the fretboard but I gave it a thorough wipedown anyway. Notice how dark and moisturized the fretboard now looks even though the surface is dry.
After about three hours, I cut off the excess sections of the toothpicks and filed them flush with the wood. A needle file was used and I was careful to avoid any scuffing of the headstock finish.
Here's a side-by-side comparison of the old and new tuning machines. The new machines turn even smoother.
I used a power-drill with a 6/64 bit to drill pilot holes for the screws.
Here are the installed tuning machines. I really like those black barrels.
And here are the machines strung with D'Addario Pro Arte Composites. The guitar now has an old-world look to it.
Later in the evening, after the strings had stretched and settled, I took out the saddle to adjust the action. For this work, my Mitutoyo 500-196 digital caliper was absolutely wonderful to work with.
- I measured the action of the 6th and 1st strings and calculated how much I needed to shave off the saddle to bring the 6th down to 0.120" and the 1st down to 0.100".
- I marked and thrice measured the saddle height at the 6th, 3rd and 1st strings. I then calculated what the height should be to achieve my desired action.
- I sanded, cleaned and measured the saddle little by little. The digital caliper measures down to 0.0005" (0.01mm) and is accurate within +/- 0.001". I was able to shave the saddle with a high degree of precision.
Sometime in the future, I'll replace the nut with one made of bone.
