I thought replacing the tuners would be pretty straightforward. I just wanted Kluson-type keystone knob tuners similar to the Ventura's original tuners but of a higher quality. Several manufacturers make reproductions of Klusons (including the new company using the Kluson name) but the ones from Gotoh appealed to me the most since they had the look, had good quality and price, and used vintage-style press-in bushings. Unfortunately, looking at the specs online, I found that the capstan height was going to be too short for the Ventura headstock. After a bit of research, the only brand that seemed to fit this particular criteria was Grover so that's what I ended up getting. They're an excellent brand but I've never really liked the look of their washers with screw-in bushings - oh well, not much choice for me here. From my research, I knew the tuner holes were going to need to be enlarged to fit the Grovers and I found this neat little tool (at
stewmac.com):
It's a rear peghole reamer that creates a counterbored peghole to more precisely fit tuners with threaded bushings like the Grovers. Anyway, it worked like a charm.
After reaming the pegholes, I did some sanding of the headstock (front and back) to smooth over the areas I had filled and/or touched up previously. Here it is after dry sanding with 400-grit sandpaper.
I then switched to wet-sanding, moving to 600, 800, 1000, and finally 1500-grit sandpaper. After that, I used my foam rotary pad with medium polishing compound followed by swirl remover (using a different pad of course). It looked like glass when I was done:
Coming up: Finishing the frets.
