Hi Hershel, you're talking about the tensioners. You can remove these very easily. The outermost knob is screwed on. Sometimes there are spacers in there so keep track of what goes where. Next is the bearing. It's made of stainless steel and it's just that,.. a bearing. The rest is just an inner flange. If the chrome is coming off of the flange it may be better to either just remove it (so there's no edges to damage the tape) or have it replated. There are lots of places that do this (and it's one nasty business). Most of these places replate household items like door/cabinet hardware or auto trim. Call around, there can be huge differences in price (it's decidedly un-Green so a lot of the price is their cost to dispose of acids/cyanide etc.). If it's the knob, that's almost entirely ornamental so it's up to you. Unless Doc has one lying around and hasn't used it for a cool looking knob on his Telecaster, you'd almost have to buy a parts deck to get one.
