Help! Rebuild a Sterling with EBMM parts

[oooogie]

Anybody know what locking tuners would be drop in for a Sterling Sub Series Axis.
Made in China. This is an awesome guitar for the $. Very impressed but,
I'm going to refinish the neck with tru oil and gunstock wax.
Clean up the frets and roll the edge of the fretboard.
Replace the tuning machines
Play around with the pickups and pots.
Anybody done any of this i would appreciate any info you may be able to impart.
Thanks. This is going to be fun.

 

[coolhandluc]

I did this to a Silo3. It was fun and a good learning experience, but in my opinion was way to costly. I would have spent the same on a used Silhouette Special in the $1000 range. If you can get used pickups CHEAP, that is definitely worth it, but everything else I wish I'd have left as is based on value per cost.

 

[PeteDuBaldo]

I have found that the headstocks on the SBMM instruments are typically a bit thicker than the EBMM versions and this does not always allow the tuners to function properly (due to variances in production they do sometimes fit). The washer & nut usually wind up partially blocking part of the hole in the tuning post, prohibiting the lower strings from going through the post smoothly.

 

[oooogie]

Hey Pete, it's Kim the guy looking to buy the tuners from you. I saw your picture in another post and I took a pic of my EBMM Axis SS. It looks like these are almost too short as well. But I measured the SBMM and it's a 1/16 thinner than my EBMM.