Ever since getting my Hamer, I've had in my mind a comment that David Grissom made about tuner buttons, to the effect that he once took the metal buttons off his guitar and weighed them in his hand and felt it seemed like a lot of unnecessary heft to put on the headstock of a guitar. That made sense to me.
I thought I'd replace the big metal buttons on the Hamer's Schaller M6s with something lighter. I didn't like any of the official Schaller buttons so I took a punt on some real bone buttons on eBay. They claimed to be M6 fit but unfortunately they had soft plastic bushings and really didn't work at all: the tuning stability was awful.
I do have a PRS DGT and the faux bone tuner buttons on that have metal bushings so I sought out a set of PRS buttons, having tested that they would fit on the M6 tuner. I finally tracked some down last week and they turned up yesterday. I fitted them last night and there is a noticeable difference in how the guitar balances on the strap. I like to slide the guitar strap on my shoulder depending on how I play so the balance of the guitar is important to me and is also why I don't like straps with a grippy side as some do.
In a fit of extreme sadness I weighed the old metal buttons. They were 3ozs in total which, when put at the end of a nice, long mahogany lever, actually is a reasonable amount of weight. I also like the look of the new tuners too, which doesn't hurt.
[corksniffing]Of course the biggest difference between the buttons is in the tone. The new buttons open up a whole range of frequencies to delight the ear. The metal buttons seem so lifeless and muddy in comparison*[/corksniffing]
*This is a lie. I can't hear any difference at all.
