I am not getting to much these days. I have bought some upgrade GOTOH tuners for my nylon string guitars, never did get to fit them yet, and at the end of 2020 I bought the Alvarez AC65HCE “crossover” in the hope that it will work out for me.
I am in the process of servicing frets (again) and fingerboard, and while I was at it, decided this guitar is probably the better home for the GOTOH TK-7949-001 set. Lyre shape, identical mounting holes, I would guess the originals came out of the GOTOH factory in any case.
The 7949 set comes with small wood screws, I would say it is meant for a brand new installation, or where the original holes do not fit. I re-used the cheap round head sheet metal screws. As a nice contrast, gold plated screws would look nice. I do prefer the originals’ dark tuning buttons, but there is a slight dimensional difference, and they are a sloppy fit on the 7949 shaft.
It would be easy to upgrade the original set a bit, with Ertacetal washers and so on. The rollers on the Alvarez set is also a harder plastic than on the 7949 set.
The 7949 set is slightly heavier too. As much as I would love to upgrade to some bearing rollers and such, the cost of that approaches the cost of an “entry level guitar”, and cannot be justified.
The plan is to fit Thomastik-Infeld KR116S strings. Hope it works. The original D’Addarios snapped the D one night while I was not looking. I have polished up the bone nut’s slots a bit, and took off the sharp edge on the bridge side slightly.
Much better gear set. Some plastic washers on thrust surfaces.
