Tonewood Teardown: Upgrading Our Harley Benton Guitar’s Tuners
Hello, and welcome back to Mod Garage! After working on the neck of our Harley Benton guitar last month, let’s spend some money to spruce it up a bit more, starting with the tuners.
Last month we learned that the stock tuners were pretty heavy, which can lead to neck dive and discomfort. Their stability didn’t impress me, either, so let’s replace them. I wanted to keep our vintage look, so some Kluson originals came to mind. These are also available as locking tuners, which are usually a good choice, but they’re heavier than standard tuners and unnecessary on an Esquire-style electric without a vibrato system. After some research, I decided to use a set of “ClipHAUS” tuners from GÖLDO. This is German vintage at its best: The design goes back to a mechanism made by the ROKO (Robert Kolb) company in the ’60s. What looks like a roof at the top is a clip made of spring steel, pressing the worm shaft against the gear wheel, resulting in backlash-free movement.
However, the old ROKO machine heads, which were used by many guitar manufacturers such as Gretsch, Guild, Höfner, and Framus, were much clunkier and lacked the cool Kluson lining on the clip. Also, these new tuners use a patented “push-through” design: The strings are run through the shaft from the top and can then be clipped off as they sprout out the back—a handy way to avoid scratches and cuts from rogue string ends on your headstock. The housing, including the steel clip, is stamped from sheet steel with extreme precision. As an additional bonus, a set of ClipHAUS tuners is less than half the weight of cast-housing tuners. This particular model is available with different tuner buttons; I went with a set sporting the original oval Kluson shape for a vintage look, which set me back $75 for a full set.
