Late to the party. Ibanez did make a copy for their 70's Firebird copies. Pretty much same damned things as the original Gibsons. They were a Kluson thing and the only difference between the guitar and bass was the shaft which had a bigger hole for a bass string and a slightly different size. The thing that sucked out loud was the offset design. The tension of a bass string tuned to pitch would physically pull the shaft gear away from the gear on the tuning button. The thing would slip like crazy, not to mention that it was a bear to turn if it kept contact. The only way to get them to work was to use short scale strings with the lowest tension possible. Considering the original headstocks were smaller to boot, installing bass tuners left very limited options. There were the Schallers later on, but back in the day most good bass tuners wouldn't fit without hanging over, and reaming the headstock out wasn't the wisest thing to do to their weakest spot. Those crummy Japanese things fit ok but looked awful. Through extensive trial and error in the days before Internet and buying parts via mailers from City Lights, I found that Grover Imperials fit the Gibson head stocks without Reaming, and worked ok with the shaft hole opened up a tad. Aesthetics are subjective but I thought they looked less appalling than Schallers or clover leaf keys. I wish they had Steinberger things back then. But then again, a set of bass tuners cost close to what anyone paid for a 50's Gibson bass back then.
