Cheap Musical Instruments: A Lesson to Late for the Learning (not the song)

I don't like tuning pegs.
I like machine heads.

My Winsor Whirle Banjolele, or the egg-slicer as I like to call it, still wasn't right after the £42's worth of tuning pegs I'd accidentally had fitted.
It would stay in, approximate, tune for about 15 seconds before needing a retune.
This made it difficult to pick material to play on it as there aren't many tunes in the '15 Second Song Book'.
There wasn't much 'play' in the adjustment either. Even the tiniest of lightest tweeks was enough to change the pitch by 2 semitones.
I thought it may be the steel strings so I tried some nylon ones.
Still no joy.
The tuning still slipped even after I'd got the stretch out of them.
Maybe the tuning pegs aren't tight enough?
I tightened a couple of them up and, despite them being nearly impossible to turn, it worked!
I tried tightening the other two and...
Disaster!
One of the knurled adjusters broke off:

Picture of hole where a tuning peg used to be

I gathered up the bits of the peg and went back to the music shop to get a replacement.
"Sorry, we only had that set" said the nice man in the shop, "but I'm going over to the suppliers next Tuesday and I'll get another one for you".
"TUESDAY?!!" I exploded, "Yeah, but the shop won't be open again till Wednesday mate".
Now under normal circumstances this wouldn't have been a problem but I've got a head full of tunes I want to record and the sound of the Whirle is an integral part of their realisation.

Then I had a brain-wave (or, possibly, an anueurysm,).
I hied me hence to the Sue Ryder charity shop (where I buy the cheap classical guitar strings) and forked out £14.99 for a little red uke with machine heads:

Little Red Ukulele

I went back to the multi-story car park, where I'd parked the car, and whipped out my electronic tuner and tuned it up.
To be honest I didn't expect much but I was surprised.
It looks like a uke, sounds like a uke therefore it must be a uke!
I drove up to the top deck of the car park and hammered out a couple of tunes for the seagulls and pigeons that live up there.
The action is somewhat high but could easily be lowered by chopping down the bridge a bit:

Mind the gap.

Still, I didn't want to become 'attached' to what is essentially a donor instrument and hurried home to set about transferring one of it's machine heads to the Whirle, thinking that I'd put it back on when the replacement peg turned up.

Having fitted the machine head, and finding it did the job perfectly, I made the decision to replace all the pegs on the Whirle:

Problem Solved!

Oh, joy!
It's changed the banjolele completely.
It now stays in tune and has done for two hours now.

So, I now have a red uke with no machine heads, 3 expensive tuning pegs with another peg on the way.
My plan is to do the remedial work on the red uke, which will involve buying another set of machine head for it, then using the tuning pegs on the next 3 Biscuit Tin and Broom Pole Basses I plan building (then selling!).

The question is, why didn't it occur to me to go to the charity shop in the first place before I was parted from the £42 I'd become sentimentally attached to?


Doh!