Leaderboard

I've been on a quest to reduce the weight of my 1998 Heritage H150 electric (Les Paul style) by reducing the hardware weight. The stock, heavy zinc stop bar and Nashville tune-o-matic have been replaced by locking Faber aluminum stop bar and ABR-1 style bridge. That's a considerable weight reduction already. That left the tuners. Grover Rotomatics are quite heavy, surprisingly so. Gotoh makes a machine head that is a 1-to-1 footprint match with Grover Rotomatics. Exact hole and screw position. The basic model number is SG301. They are very high quality, sealed, smooth turning and have 18:1 gear ratio. The tuners are available in wide variety of options, colors, button types, post heights, locking and non-locking versions. Of interest is Gotoh SG301-AB20-C-L3/R3. "-AB20" is an *aluminum*, chrome plated, Rotomatic large style button. The Goto tuners weigh 29.6 grams each. That's versus Rotomatics at 43 grams each. Each SG301 with the aluminum button is 13.4 grams lighter than the Grover Rotomatic. This shaves 80 grams, 2.84 ounces, off the headstock of the guitar. The look of the guitar is maintained, no holes drilled or altered at all. The tuner change and the Faber hardware got me under the 9-pound mark. I weighed in at 8lbs, 15-ounces, ready to play. It also has good balance on the strap. For comparison, I weighed a plastic, "keystone vintage style" tuner at 26.6 grams. That would have shaved another 18 grams off the guitar, but the mounting screw pattern is not identical, would have required some drilling and left evidence of a tuner change. Not worth the extra half ounce. I ordered the tuners from JAParts from Canada. Had them in stock and took about a week to arrive in the US.