Unless a client chooses a specific brand of machine heads I need to decide what to use, sometimes the decision is based on the aesthetics and sometimes I am just looking for the best tuner at a specific price point. For a long time Sloanes were my standard choice but lately importing them is more expensive and full of hassles so I am trying other things. For now the Rubners seem to be a good choice and the Schellers for the Torres copy. These are Ullsperger, probably at least 30 years old and based on the old Reischl. If you are familiar with the Reischl you will know that you have to relieve the wood to make room for the rivets, the rivets on these are twice as deep! Gotoh. I bought these to use on a flamenco guitar but ended up using something different, they are not as lightweight as I had hoped.
Faithful Sloane, I have used these for many years. Der Jung, new on the sceneRodgers is always a good choice but pushes the price of the instrument up. Scheller is mechanically very nice and I like being able to order them with no engraving.Here are the Rubners, so far I dislike the screw on the peg, I will have to figure out how to keep it from coming loose.This is the old Reischl, waiting for someone ask for them on a guitar. These are from my teacher’s estate and they have a fantastic, solid feel.
Here is a little about this famous Spanish book from this page. Below is a powerful video of one of the poems.
This is a literary text written in poetical prose. It is also part fiction and part autobiographical. It relates the life of the author in his beloved hometown, Moguer, Spain. In addition to the relationship that he has with his faithful little donkey, Platero, the story depicts the life in a small Spanish town, of the author’s life after he returned to his hometown after being gone for a while. The towns’ people see him as being a odd….dressed in black, and always accompanied by his donkey…the town’s children call him “El loco”. The book is divided into 138 short sections, narratives, which are numbered chapters; no one contains more than eight paragraphs. It is poetical in the author’s choice of words and style of writing: metaphors, similes, symbolization, and lyrical impressions abound. Keeping with the poetical prose of Romanticism, the author utilizes musical aspects of language as well as poetical images. Many think JRJ wrote this book with children as his intended audience; however, the author himself addressed this in the prologue to a later edition saying that this was for no one. “Some people believe that I wrote Platero and I for children, that this is a book for children.
No. In 1913, the editor of La Lectura, who knew I was writing this book, asked me to advance
a few of its most idyllic pages for its “youth series.” Then, changing my idea momentarily,
I wrote this prologue:
A NOTE TO THOSE GROWNUPS WHO MIGHT READ THIS BOOK TO CHILDREN:
This short book, where joy and sadness are twins, like the ears of Platero, was written for… I have no idea for whom!
… For whomever lyric poets write… Now that it goes to the children, I do not add nor remove a single comma. That’s it!
“Wherever there are children”- Novalis used to say- “there is a Golden Age.” Well. it is within this Golden Age, which is like
a spiritual island fallen from the skies, that the heart of the poet walks, and it finds itself there so at home that its
most cherished wish would be not to have to ever abandon it.
Island of grace, of freshness and of joy, Golden Age of children; I always could find you in my life, a sea of mourning;
let your breeze lend me its lyre high and sometimes senseless like the trill of the lark in the white sun of the morning!
I have never written nor will ever write anything for children, because I believe that the child can read the books that
grownups read, with some few exceptions, that come to everyone’s mind. There are of course exceptions too for men and for women.”
Hearing a guitar for the first time in the hands of a great player is a wonderful thing for a guitar-maker but if we are lucky enough to follow the evolution of the instrument and the player there might well be other milestones. The first time on stage is a thrill too. This was taken at the international debut of Lorenzo Palomo’s symphony “Córdoba” and the guitar is spruce and indian rosewood as perhaps is obvious. The guitar was played without amplification and did just fine so “who needs a double top or lattice bracing?”
The prologue of the book “The Granada School of Guitar-makers” was written by Angelo Gilardino. As a matter of fact, having this excellent piece was very helpful in my search to find a publisher very early in the project. In the book you will find English and Spanish versions but of course he wrote it in his native Italian and the true beauty of his writing comes through better in the Italian. I suspect that is why he recently published it on his own page. If your Italian is good enough please read it here.
These are Ullsperger, probably at least 30 years old and based on the old Reischl. If you are familiar with the Reischl you will know that you have to relieve the wood to make room for the rivets, the rivets on these are twice as deep! 
Gotoh. I bought these to use on a flamenco guitar but ended up using something different, they are not as lightweight as I had hoped.
Der Jung, new on the scene
Rodgers is always a good choice but pushes the price of the instrument up. 
Scheller is mechanically very nice and I like being able to order them with no engraving.
Here are the Rubners, so far I dislike the screw on the peg, I will have to figure out how to keep it from coming loose.
This is the old Reischl, waiting for someone ask for them on a guitar. These are from my teacher’s estate and they have a fantastic, solid feel.
