Customising Your Tuners
There are a great many options for customising your set of tuners. This page covers most of the extra options which are not easily identifiable from the Shop page when ordering your set.
Plate Options
Custom engraved designs
Although we have hundreds of engraved designs and are continually expanding our collection, we also offer customers the option to personalise their tuners with their own designs. These can be anything from sending a line drawing to a fully completed CAD file.
We have made engraved designs from photos sent by customers who wish to recreate designs of the Alhambra palace in Spain, to Indian art from a necklace. Or marquetry on an instrument can be reproduced.
Most things are possible and the cost of personalisation is reflected by the complexity and time required to produce each design. If a CAD file is sent which can be used directly, then the extra cost is very small.
Custom logotype, initials and lettering
As a Luthier building your 50th or 100th instrument, or whatever the occasion happens to be, it is worth celebrating the occasion. Many like to do this by making an extra special instrument and it is nice when the machine heads commemorate this as well. We have often been asked to add some text like ‘No. 100’, an initial or logo to the side-plate engraving and this is something we welcome and are pleased to offer.
Plate end designs
The ends of the plates are profiled and polished to suit the engraved design. However, often Luthiers have a particular headstock profile which they use for a range of instruments. To keep a uniformity of design we are able to customize the side-plate end profiles to the shape of the headstock, or any other shape. Please note, we do not offer the Lyre style as we feel this is not representative of the Rodgers brand. Above are a few examples of end profiles.
Number of mechanisms or spacing
We can make sets with any number of mechanisms or combinations. ‘Single mechanism’ tuners are sometimes used to make the required number of strings. Most often, a pair or plates with the multi-mechanisms are the preferred choice.
7 string tuners often have 4 mechanisms on the bass and 3 on the treble. These can be made with with the same length plate for both halves but with wider mechanism spacing for the 3-side plate.
The spacing between the mechanisms can be whatever you like (within certain parameters) and we have smaller buttons when the spacing is too small for standard buttons.
Custom woodscrew positions
Replacing tuners is covered in more details here. However, custom woodscrew hole positions are the most common customizations we make. Many customers prefer to be able to remove the old set and fit the new set directly in place. This has certain disadvantages which are covered in the above link but is often easier for players without access to tools or repair shops with tooling.
Custom button material
Custom wooden buttons can be made using wood sent to us. This makes the tuners uniquely matched to the instrument. Please find details here.
End Pips, button shafts and colours
The buttons shafts can be customised with two types of end-pips and three different shapes of sleeves. They can also be coloured along with the side-plate. We have made sets with black, green or red engraving but other colours are available.
Buttons
Send us the same wood as you are making the instrument from and we can make the buttons for the tuners to match.
String rollers
Need string rollers that are not standard? We can make almost any string roller you need. Even tapered rollers.
Polished parts
We have two versions of the end pips, ‘Standard Dome’ and ‘Low-profile Dome’.
We have three versions of the sleeves, Standard, Modern and Straight.
