Help! busted Fender Dual Professional tuners

Adam · Post by **Adam** » 30 Jun 2000 11:57 am

Help!My trusty '54 Dual Professional had a couple of tuners start to slip when I put on a new set of strings yesterday rendering it unable to tune a few hours before a gig(I ended up using my Bigsby instead,even though it should probably never leave my house).Does anybody know a fix for this or a place for replacement parts?I tried to do a Forum search,but didn't find much.Thanks folks!

Jon Light (deceased) · Post by **Jon Light (deceased)** » 30 Jun 2000 12:42 pm

Hey Adam. Bummer. My observation is that there are two common problems--the gear getting stripped--not difficult unscrewing and replacing this--I have an old beater Harmony steel string lying around and I pulled a gear off of it and it was a perfect fit on the Dual Pro so I would think that any guitar repair shop could find you this part--

-or-

the whole rig busting its solder joint there-by allowing wiggle room so that the worm gear doesn't engage the gear. This seems real common. We had a recent discussion of this and a real good idea was to bring the whole tuner pan to a jewelry maker to resolder. This is not electronic soldering iron kind of stuff and although I'm tempted to try my hand at it with a little butane torch, I know that I haven't got a clue and shouldn't touch it.
I have a couple of loose assemblies and when I get around to it I think this is going to be what I do.

Mike Black · Post by **Mike Black** » 30 Jun 2000 4:36 pm

zzaaa

Fred Layman · Post by **Fred Layman** » 2 Jul 2000 7:25 pm

If the problem is a stripped knob on top of the tuner post, you can drill a 7/64 hole on one of the side edges (3 o'clock or 9 o'clock position) into the center of the knob and thread it for a 6-32 set screw. Screw the set screw tightly against the tuner post so it holds under pressure. This is a good fix and is hardly visible since it is on the edge of the knob. For best accuracy, drill the hole with a drill press.

Mark Zinns · Post by **Mark Zinns** » 3 Jul 2000 2:57 pm

I bought a 54 Dual Pro a couple of years ago and it was missing the entire tuning assembly for the front neck. I decided to build an assembly from aluminum stock and replacement Fender tuners. Well, after having this setup on my guitar for a while, I must say that I would much prefer the original drop-in tuners. Do what ever you have to to preserve or repair what you have. Just my two cents worth.

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Sierra U-12
Sho-Bud D-12
Fender Dual Professional

Adam · Post by **Adam** » 3 Jul 2000 6:07 pm

Thanks for the help guys.The Forum comes to my rescue once again.I'd be dead meat without all the help I get here.I'd still like to hear of anyone's experience repairing these.Hopefully I can take a crack at it next week and put the Bigsby back into retirement where it's safe.

Mark van Allen · Post by **Mark van Allen** » 12 Jul 2000 1:27 am

Hi, Adam, we had several posts about tuners a while back- I go into guitar shops and ask to paw through their tuner bucket, they have a box or drawer full of old tuner parts from past repairs and when folks replaced old tuners with Grovers and the like- you'll almost always find exact replacement gears for the brass colored "star" gear, which if chewed up even a little won't hold tension, especially on the wound strings. In a pinch you can sometimes take several of the gears off and rotate from one tuner to another- a nearly stripped wound-string gear might hold on an unwound string- if the solder joint on the tuner pan is broken of course that needs repair- but sometimes a very slight bend of the bracket holding the worm gear will tighten the whole thing up (small needlenose pliers do the trick) last, don't tighten the screw holding the brass "star" gear too tightly or it may cause the tuner to bind. Simply loosening that screw a bit, then reapplying some locktite, or even a dab of thick paint to keep the screw on may solve some slipping problems. Like any of us after 40 years or so we're gonna bind up someplace...

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Mark van Allen-"Blueground Undergrass" Pedal, Non-Pedal, Lap, and Dobro

Lefty · Post by **Lefty** » 13 Jul 2000 4:07 pm

If you check E-bay steel guitar there is a Rickenbacker double neck (under steel guitar category) advertised that has a link to a parts store that sells the old kluson tuners. (Probably not cheep).

Will Houston · Post by **Will Houston** » 13 Jul 2000 9:35 pm

i have a 53 dual pro and i wait for that to happen every time i tune. when i got it one tuner slipped, luckily its the bass string bottom neck,so i got an 8 string and a 7 string.