Picked up a Jackson SL7HT... 64 guage string won't fit?!

[BZM]

JCF Online people! I need your help. I bought a Jackson SL7HT Pro series for this death metal band I joined... the band is asking me to tune to Drop F# (I know... lol). I bought an 8 string guitar string set, discarded the 80 guage, and went to put the 64 guage string in... guess what? IT WON'T EVEN FIT IN THE TUNING PEG! Jackson locking tuners apparently won't fit anything larger than a 58 guage... so what do I need to do? Do I need to buy a new bridge designed for these thicker strings as well as new tuning machines? Wishing I would have just bought a baritone 6 string now KIND OF... If I didn't love this guitar so much it wouldn't even be worth the effort! Thanks in advance for the responses!


P.S. I am well aware that tuning this low on a guitar is ridiculous, yes I should have bought a bass, no it wasn't my choice it was the vision of the songwriter, if it were up to me I would never tune a guitar lower than Drop A unless it was an 8 string guitar... Yet here I am... Got a call for a gig and basically said yes didn't realize it would be so expensive and require so many mods to my brand new instrument! LOL

[C-Squared]

http://www.sporthitech.com/brands/Hipshot.html

Talk to the folks at Sport hitech and let them know what size strings you'll be using. I got a 7 string set oh hipshots that will go up to an .080 low string

[toejam]

Drill the tuner out to fit a larger string.

[BZM]

Drill the tuner out to fit a larger string.

Thanks, I was afraid of that being the solution but I might as well... since it's just the stock tuners anyways and they can be replaced rather easily...

Also, apologies if this was posted in the wrong forum!

Best regards,

-Sean

[toejam]

Yep, drilling it will be. I had to do that on an 8-string that couldn't fit above a 74.