Stub Mandrel

I think that if tuners have rounded ends to the notches, then they are modern ones, no matter how 'aged' they look.

I would have been impressed by Prime randomly playing me matching mole, except I wanted to hear the CCR track again...

Don't forget, the M8 screws need washers in their pockets to spread the load. The force will be equal to the load on the inside so spreading it over a greater area than those two washers is redundant.

It was all miming to 1966. After that it gets complicated as miming to a pre-recorded backing track was allowed.

In my view, your images prove the variation is down to jig settings or other variations. It now seems possible that the corners were 'clipped' one at a time. The variation could simply be down to how accurately the operator fitted the dies (and presumably some sort of guides) when switching to do bottom corners. Such small variations would be much harder to spot on the top corners because of the shape, you would have to measure them.

I agree with @Hellzero I'm sure it's a product of the manufacturing process, not intentional. If it was intentional it would be curved like in the re-issues or at the wide end of original tuners. I think I have the answer, looking at the photo that started all this off. Compare the two middle tuners: Relative to the screw holes and mechanism, the plate on the D-string tuner is 'higher up' with a bigger gap between the top edge and screws tan the A-string tuner. The A-string tuner is noticeably longer so that it contacts the E-string tuner, but the lower screw holes appear to be the same distance from the edge. The lower edge of the worm gear on the D-string appears to align with the bottom of the plate, that for the A-string overlaps considerable, despite the plate being longer. It could be a trick of the camera perspective, however. There are definite variations in the dimensions of the tuners that point to multiple operations using jigs or tooling that are not at the same settings, if not completely different. A few minutes with a pair of calipers would sort it out.

The other night I was adding new bass lines to someone else's material, much of it on the fly. We were making rough guide recordings in garageband. I aimed to get one good take of each section, which could then be cut and pasted to make the full song.

Thinking about it... my comparison would have between an official version while the YouTube one could gave been a user upload even one sourced from vinyl, tape and ripped using unknown settings.

This is clearly different from the 'repro' tuners. The notch is square. I'd hypothesise that originally a length of strip was cut into tapered blanks in a guillotine. These would then be die-cut at each end to round them off. If the blank was originally cut slightly wide then the thin end would be cut like this. The wider end would not be noticeably affected due to the different shape. Indeed the double 'flare' seems deliberately chosen to allow for some variation. As the blanks would be cut in batches, it seems reasonable that, if the guillotine was also used for other jobs, or had to be reset after sharpening, the effect would change between batches. As all tuners would be considered the same, one would expect batches to get mixed up... You could write a PhD thesis about this...

Curve ball! Notched both sides, which makes sense, particularly if they are cut in two or three operations. It's also the AVII 1960 P: And the Flea Jazz:

A die punch uses two matched dies, the upper one is the shape of the object wanted, and is forced through a matching hole. There is a small clearance around the die. If it was the upper die that is forced through a hole in the lower die that was chipped, the extra clearance would mean that it would punch out a slightly smaller shape.

I found this...

An interesting fact about internal threads... all the strength is in about 4 threads. That gives more metal cross section than the core of the screw, plus elastic deformation concentrates the stress in a tiny portion of the engaged threads. This is why screws strip far more frequently than nuts. You will find that inserts with a deep external thread are very strong, however as they put the wood in tension they may not be ideal. Your idea of using spike nuts, that will spread the load over more timber and put it in compression is sound.

I meant 'tiny' in the context of proper bass speakers, I should have used 'small'.

I don't know, I compared YouTube with Prime Music and the latter definitely sounded way better. For that speaker demo, I think my small speakers eliminated the woolly bottom end of the Markbass, while not allowing the bottom end of the Barefaced speakers to come through. They are odd little things, as some music sounds great on them. I'm not a small speaker sceptic - have a PJB C4 which has loads of bottom end, it just isn't very efficient.

It wouldn't be a drill press, they are used to make holes. More likely a die cutting press. The simplest explanation is that one of the dies got chipped.

It's not a huge kit but I think there's some wide angle distortion! Here's a more proportionate pic:

Anything mangled by YouTube's compression then played through little phone, laptop or PC speakers is unlikely to sound anything like it does IRL.

I'm sure the android app does too, but that doesn't really help me as I use my PC for learning songs.

I'm actually listening to the sound out of my 2" PC speakers. To me, plenty of bottom end on both, but the Markbass definitely sounds better and more detailed IMHO.

I make each string a little longer than the previous one. Big fat strings are less likely to slip.

I have Amazon Prime and I could use Amazon Prime Music for learning songs - it's noticeably higher quality than youtube and no ads 🙂 But, I can't get autoplay to switch off. Help chat has told me to download the PC app. more effin' bloat... The app finally loads, then tells me it is out of date and to update it... but doesn't give me a clear route to update. There is no autoplay off under settings, despite what the chat are telling me. They now tell me to download the smartphone app. No doubt that hasn't got the autoplay off setting either, and anyway would that switch it off on another device?

Take it Caerphilly...

If you ever come to the UK I'm sure I could get you a gig or two. Not big money though

I'm sure he'll cover expenses, what with being a rock star.