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Hi, this may be already known to many of you out there, but I’ll share it anyway.

Some years ago, I ordered Sperzel tuning machines, the locking type 6 in line, and had a set leftover. And as the guitars I have built since that time have all been acoustic’s I have not been able to use this six inline set of tuners.

I decided to use them on a project solid body guitar I’m building, they are really too good for this build, but I have them anyway so what the heck.

Looking at them closely it appeared that they could be reversible, making them from left to right hand and of course visa versa. I have done this often with open-back tuners, but not the fully enclosed type. I took off the knob and pulled off the worm drive shaft support collar [which is normally part of an enclosed tuners body] and pushed out the worm drive and shaft from the main body, leaving the drive cog in place on its post.

Low and behold the machining of the main body is such that the worm drive and support collar will fit either side. S I reassembled the tuner in reverse, and it works fine.

If I had known this years ago, I could have used these tuners as three a side or six in line.

Cheers Taff

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I guess it makes sense for them to manufacture a unit that can be assembled as either right handed or left - rather than manufacture two different versions.  I recently tried to do the same thing with some Schertler open gear tuners but after I pulled it apart I found they cannot be reversed.  But I could swap out the shorter post of a peghead-style tuner for the longer post of a slot-head one, and solved my problem that way. 

Ron Sperzel and his team are smart peeps, we use a ton of Sperzels and the consistent design and engineering specs means we can mix and match most components and housings/ spacers/ knobs. They also do hybrid tuners and sets for us at minimal or no up charge. The benefit of being able to convert any tuner from left to right, including massively reduced inventory costs is obvious.  I wish the industry overall was as good as Sperzel.   
regards Rusty

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