The Collings Forum

Well, I'm getting tried of the Golden Age tuners and am looking for a quality direct replacement. Not looking to spend Waverly money, Gotoh or similar.

Anyone found a replacement they like?

well, looks like I'm alone here. During regular playing the tuners are tolerable. But tuning for recording is just a pain.

Probably best to do some measurements and then a search.
I suspect GA tuners are standardized so most likely many would work.
I think Kluson reissues would look pretty appropriate on any Waterloo.

Short of Waverly, i don't know of any 3 on a plate tuners, other than Golden Age Restoration. Have you tried any lubrication on them? A friend of mine put G.A.R. tuners on her '30s L-00 and I just swapped out the originals on my '45 D18 for G.A.R. because they fit the footprint. In both cases they work much better than the 70-80 yr old tuners. Seeing as it's not a vintage instrument, if you could get by the drop-in requirement, i'd put some Gotoh open back individual tuners on it. I have those on a Pre*War Co 000-18 and they are very smooth and tune precisely.

Stew Mac wrote me back and suggested Gotoh on a plate, same size but screw holes are slightly different. I'm going to give those a try. Thanks all.

I'm in the same boat with my WL-S Deluxe but that model is a slotted headstock design. I would like a drop in replacement for both that model as well as my WL-12. Lubing the tuners kind of worries me, the possibility of excess lube seeping into the wood, or attracting dirt make me hesitate to go this route. Anyone have experience with lubing these GA tuners?

A quick update: After contacting Collings, they reached out to Stewmac and they are sending me a new set of GAR tuners. Hoping they work better than the originals. If not then I will probably upgrade to a set of Waverly's. I'd prefer to not do that but I know they'd be a huge improvement over the stock GAR item.