Screw Me

[SteveDallas]

Miss Dallas' cello has machine tuners at the top. (The kind normally found on string bases, as opposed to just plain pegs, which are more common on cellos.) One of the screws fell off, and we need a replacement. In my naievety, I thought I could take a sample down to the hardware store and get a replacement.

Since I'm posting this, I'm sure you can already guess that everything was either too small or too large. After consultation with a handful of string instrument repair experts (one of whom actually laughed at Mrs. Dallas on the phone--way to make friends and earn future business from a family with a violinist and a cellist), we've learned that such screws are actually custom made, and that we can get a replacement made for $100-$200.

Now, this screw is not structural or functional--I mean in the sense that it affects the tuning. There is a gear that adjusts the string tension, and these screws only serve to hold the gears onto the side of the pegbox.

So, thoughts? I figure surely somebody here knows where I can have a simple machine screw like this duplicated for less than $100.

(I forgot to include something for scale... the size is somewhere in between 10-24 and 1/4-20.)