Well, people will ahve their favorites especially if they have invested money in something, not many will have tried the otehr options...
Frankly, 'schallers' have been the industry standard and I'm sure they will have continued to make great tuners with the same german precision as always and servicing high end guitars and makers well...such as fenders.
Bothe my fender style guitars use 'fender branded' schallers and are excellent...
www.stewmac.com/shop/Tuners/Guitar,_solid_peghead_tuners/Schaller_Tuners/Schaller_Locking_Guitar_Machines_6-In-Line.html
I got mine and other genuine fender parts from the 'stratoshpere/reliable fender parts out guys (they take apart new fenders and sell them off as parts. I've seen them also new on ebay reasonably too. The unbranded shallers are the same.
So, what you have is a tuner that requires no little 'screws' as there is a post under to stop them rotating. Staggered two height tuners and sealed precision 16-1 ratio. Never had any problem at all with them
because of the 'dampers' in my tele's LSR nut, I did not need a string tree...on my strat I used two roller trees and a conventional nut...
On my LP I used 'sperzels' as a change and for a little economy...I was not as impressed and extremely 'light weight'...not sure what they are made of, perhaps aluminium. They work ok, but not as impressed...obviously the larger 3+3 gibson size.
On my Jazz-strat thing I was extremely disappointed using a GFS knock off that with post turned out to be dearer than schallers anyway. Out of the box, the high e kept being guilitined off and required some filing to stop that effect but don't trust them too much even since 'fixing' them. Not at all impressed!
<< not good and teh postage at GFs is a killer and hidden till after you order!!!
You can get all kinds of replacement 'buttons' for the schallers too if you look around to customise the look, and are the tuners that work with hipshots drop tuning device...
But far and away the best so far have been the hipshot tuners...
Especially for customisation, I chose black knobs for a bit extra and you can order in any combination, staggered or not (as with this project) and these 18:1 open backed versions. They have a closed back 16:1 as well. The ones here are the small 'small size' that would fit a strat.
But really, any of the big names tend to be pretty good, but skimping can be a real false economy.
Anything one might read on forums is going to be highly suspect I would suggest, unless you do a lot of guitars and try a lot of product, can you really have much of opinion, few have this. And then again, we all have our biases and looking into the CEO's personal life and extrapolating a loss of quality is a bit rich, after all, it is not as if Schaller Snr or Jnr were actually making tehm by hand...the hipshots by the way, effectively are strangely enough.
As for your problems with nuts and such which ever brand, I don't think it is fair that you infer anything from those experiences and if the problem was a 'sitar effect' I very much doubt that was the product as much as the users experience with fiting and that kind of thing, might be wrong, but suspect not. We all have such experiences and in my experience with high end components, the problem has invariably been with me and or the application and needs a bit of ingenuity to get things to work. Khalers are notorious for that kind of thing, but with some study and understaniding, preferably before you hit problems...I found Dan Erlwines classic "Guitar Player Repair Guide" to be invaluable for all these kinds of things...they can be avoided or overcome. For amnythings too, patience and proper tools and understanidng and experience of using tehm too are best for best results. With a lot of guitar stuff, you only get the one chance and little room for error...things like fitting an LSR or a Khaler or a maze of other stuff can go terribly wrong really quick and permanently.
But hey, gotoh, shaller I am sure they are equally fairly decent.
Check that the lock screw cant fall out and get lost and if looking to add 'mass' to the headstock, I can vouch for the 'weight' in the shallers at least...the gotoh look remarkably like schaller copies in a way...
When manufactures have to write 'magnum lock' on their gear you have to ask, "what the F does that mean" really. Still, I dare say they work and reasonable enough quality. After been burnt though, if it were me I'd go for the originals and forget about what some other 'guy' has to say about stuff like that and rumours and the like. If you go for mojo, I see that gotoh certainly lays on a bit in some of tehir sals stuff, but who knows...
