Long throw option/ Replacement machine heads

Hi all, new here.

So I have a Fender Nashville B-Bender and while I have well over 30 years experience as a pro player, I am a rank novice when it comes to Bender licks. I bought it new towards the end of last year from Guitar Center.

I do know when a guitar is out of adjustment and boy was my guitar setup badly by the factory. It was really bad. There was a "knock" when the bender would come on and let off and the action of it felt awful. B string changing was a pita as the barrel did not line up so the string would not feed through. You had to actuate the bender a tad.

Anyway, I had several wonderful telephone conversations with Gene and eventually sent him the guitar and paid for him to set it up right. He had to re-machine some stuff and I had him do the long throw option.

That bender sure feels sweet now and sounds great!!!! Even to a beginnerbender.:lol:

Mr Parsons did a fantastic job and the turnaround was quite fast. The long throw dealio is great, it really feels more musical and sweet as he claims and still is not as long as the original....it's a compromise. It feels so smooth.....the way it was it was on and off......thats it.....too fast for me......hard to find a 1/2 step. Now it is easy.


Fender really jacked up the installation and actually put cheap washers in as spacers rather than take the time to do it right. The spacers even had an I.D that was too large for the O.D of the shaft they were on, so there was all this slop.....whoever did that is a bozo. Sorry to say that.....true though. Gene sent me back the parts he replaced with notes of what he had to do.

So now I have a really crappy G string machine head and I don't like the feel of them in general. The G string tuner is quite horrible....jumps past pitch and the action of it is inconsistent.

So what tuners do you good folks recommend that will drop in with absolutely no, zero, modifications to the guitar? I do not want to drill holes for screws or ream out the holes and I would prefer if the footprint of the replacements is the same also, to minimize witness marks.

I see the Sperzels look nice....they are a bit smaller though. Like the locking aspect Do the stock tuners have small locating nubs in them in lieu of screws?

Any recommendations?

Thanks.

Fumbles, what you now have is a medium throw bender. Please check out this thread that was posted in December of last year as it explains in detail, why a true long throw is not really practical with this design.

http://www.tdpri.com/forum/b-bender-forum/185104-extending-throw-p-g.html

I also like this throw better than the factory as it almost mirrors my P/W modified long throw.

BTW, I have never had any problem with either the locking or standard Fender Schaller tuners. You might just have a bad one, replace it with an original. Most guitar shops can get you a single replacement for less than ten bucks

Dogbear, thanks buddy.

Yes I do understand the throw I have now is not as "long" as the original Clarence one......and this was also explained to me by Gene. He personally likes the longer one but says he struck a happy medium for what he now calls the Long Stroke Option.

I just called it that as that is what he calls it.:grin: I did get some parts back...the clevis etc so I know he modified it by replacing parts rather than just adjustment. He said he also had to machine some of the parts to repair what Fender had done.

I did not know that the stock tuners on the Nashville B-Bender are Schallers...is that right?

Well yeah, if that is correct I could just get one. I was going to replace the whole set because I thought they were some crappy no name deal.

Schaller locking's might be pretty nice on that guitar.

Some don't like the locking ones, but I have them on my Nashville. Use the two pin Fender ones instead of the single pin retail ones and they are a direct replacement.

I will check those out. Thanks for the advice....I did not know about the 1 pin 2 pin deal.

Now I gotta find some benderlicks on the web somewhere and try make some good sounds.