I've encountered the topic of ABR-1 style bridges getting flattened by string tension before... the solution was always either to replace or re-file the saddle nothches to reflect the radius (ie. on StewMac). I've honestly never seen anybody even considering, let alone showcasing, giving a try to straighten the whole bridge, and it's a "so simple that it's embarassing nobody thought of it" moment. I just love how every thing you do goes through the "what can be done in this case and what's the pros and cons of it, what you need to watch out for" thought process that you can clearly explain to your viewers. You're a true renaissance man Ted, both an artist and a scholar to the full extent.
Wow! I just learned something & I've been messing with guitars for 40+ years! Seems like the metal is just too soft for those heavy bottoms maybe. I do know that cast parts can have really uneven grain structure
I know the bridge is one thing, but I'm also learning about the people who like to top wrap, there's a company called Lightning guitars who makes a very cool tailpiece which gives the best break angle to the bridge with the tailpiece completely seated
I was always a "deck the tailpiece" guy. Then I bought a brand new ES-339 when they came out. It came from the factory with the tailpiece off the deck almost 3/8". I was skeptical at first, but it played like butter and sounded fantastic. I decked it, and the guitar lost something special, so I raised it back up. Now I am a believer in moving it to suit the guitar, the overall sound and feel, the style, and the player. Yet another thing that was absolute to me, now in old age learning that there is nuance in everything, and never believe what the internet tells you without some personal experimentation. Now lets talk about those 7.25" Fender necks...
I love your videos, im a cabinet maker from the faroe islands. 50k people and i love doing repairs. You have becially educated me in everything. :P thank you man!!
Facing the same P-90 problem, I bought a couple of cheap P-90 covers, and carefully cut the tops off with my bandsaw, creating instant shims. A wee bit of finish work, and they were ready to use. I'm lazy.
My Les Paul had bridge sag about 20 years ago and I was able to bend it back with shims and C-clamps on the edge of my bench, approximating the same function as your bench vise jig. At the same time I reduced the break angle and thus the pressure to make the bridge sag by threading the strings into the stop tail backwards and wrapping them over the top. The stop tail is right down on the deck & I still have sufficient break angle that's evidenced by no reduction in tone or sustain. It's held up like this for nearly 2 decades so I guess I must have done something right.
@@jarrusjenkins I considered that too but I'm a fix it 'til it can't be fixed anymore kind of guy. It often makes no financial sense but that's just how I'm wired.
@@jarrusjenkins Gotoh makes excellent hardware across the board with constantly high value-for-money. My favorite is their 201 Fender replacement bridge.
Thank you for this! I had bought a Casino Worn that I’m coming to realize, needs shims on both pickups (mostly neck). I was just recently trying to find a way around the exorbitant cost of the branded shims and was contemplating making some. Documented procedure “check”! Your show is top drawer by the way. Please keep the great content coming!
About the feel of tension vs scale length and break angle, most people seem to miss a couple things. The sharper break angle with a TOM and tail piece offers a little more friction, not necessarily a problem, but enough to feel, combine that with such short string length between the bridge(and therefore the break angle) and the tail piece, and it generally feels a little stiff. More string length after the break angle, like with a string thru, offers more string to be stretched during play, contributing to a loose feel. Neither really represent problems, just things I've noticed between guitar types, stop tail/string thru/double locked/ect, and the way they feel to play. Cool video as always!
Yeah, the break angle doesn't change the strings' tension but it does change the yield of that little bit of string slack behind the bridge. Bigger the break angle less yield.
You can't have less tension ("looser feel") while maintaining the same pitch. During bends, this "looser feel" would necessarily require you to bend that much further to achieve the same tension required to achieve the same bent note played with the supposedly higher tension created by a sharp break angle. The string can only be one specific level of tension to be a specific pitch and requires a precise level of further tension to be raised to a specific higher pitch. Same pitch = same tension.
I'm having one of those days when when everything seems to be going to shit yaknow, circumstances just piled up and now all i can do is to just curl up in bed a and try to start fixing a goddamn mess when i wake up tomorrow. Your videos allow me to relax, and to feel good about something even when everything feels like it's getting to be a bit too much for me, so, thank you. You are an artist.
The Les Paul classics from that era were SO cool. I'd love one of the gold tops from that era. They then started doing them with those strange green inlays which I never understood.
Great tip on the bridge straightening jig. I've the problem in other videos but have never had one come in my shop. Good to know they can be fixed at least once. Thanks Ted.
I was trying to figure out how you might go about straightening that bridge and realised that a vise would be involved but was just trying to imagine what kind of spacers would work and of course you produced a really well thought out jig for that ! Nice work Ted !
pretty much all gibson tune-o-matic bridges sag in the middle over time, they're just pot metal. for many years now my routine has been to set one upside down with the ends resting on my opened-up bench vise and _gently_ hammer all over the middle area with my little fretting hammer to sort of "massage" it straight again that works just fine and i've avoided the idea of straight-up pressing it in the vise for fear that it would crack but it might be time to revisit the idea
Radiusing a floyd rose this way would be an interesting experiment. *I have shimmed several, but for whatever reason it has never performed well so I ended up filing each saddle which produced action that will surpass even hard tail fulcrum tremolos.* The process was unfortunately ridiculously tedious and the saddle order did not descend from strings 3 and 4 like expected. *3 ended up being lower than 1, but it was worth the effort.* *The day will come soon enough when I do it to more guitars now that you can buy a good quality Floyd for $20 out of China.* Another ironic story is 20 years ago when there was a guitar player's chatroom full of virtuoso guitarists, someone spent $400 on a brand new, authentic Floyd Rose made in America and it still had all the out of box issues as the ones from China for $35 in those days! *BTW, the floyds I filed saddles that did the best were oddly enough, string through versions.* I'm working on a mod to convert a locking to string through so the fine tuners can still be used. It's an easy conversion in terms of pulling the bolts and blocks to feed the strings through the bolt hole, but then you have no fine tuners anymore 😒
You could drill a hole trough the fine tuning screws and feed the string trough them, maybe add a washer so that the string can rotate freely (or machine an special screw and insert for this purpose, going between the screw and the string, with some channels for bearing spheres).
@@artbk I have considered doing exactly that now that I have a precision drill press and scrap bridges collected to experiment with, but it will still be a difficult process to coordinate the work and get through the hardened metal. *Strangely, I have used a lot of fender vintage styled 2-point floating tremolos with no locking parts and graphite or even polished aluminum and brass nuts, and once the strings are broke in, they return to pitch accurately like one would never expect.* What I often did was simply tighten the screws heavily on the knobs and this pressure is enough to make the knob quite rigid to turning by hand, so the string pressure shifts don't budge them whatsoever. As of the last few years, I rarely ever lock the nut because I've hardly touched the trem bar whereas previously, I would grab it dozens of times throughout the day. *This habit rose from not wanting to deal with fine tuning them lol.* Anyway, with dozens of guitars packed away that need some minor repairs, upgrades or adjustments, it's time to get busy. *I have a few dozen guitars and only one that meets my standards ATM that is worth playing daily.* It's a long story(longer than this one) as to why, but I have always been a stickler for having no less than 3 grab and go electrics at all times and broke that rule a whopping 5 years ago. This does however exclude 3 8-string guitars that used to be my daily players, but it's just an endlessly long story of digressing lol. I will close by making the point that a couple weeks of playing an 8-string daily makes playing a 6 string like a child's toy. My skillset gets so high from the switch that I feel strangely embarrassed like I'm playing with children's toys.
Sean its no dumb question at all, I love the thoughts which arise thinking about it. Things like the ABR-1 idea of the longer thinner 6-32 brass screws transferring vibration deeper into the body than the slightly wider Nashville style on heavier posts into metal collars in the body. And then there's the Babicz full contact bridge taking discovery even further. The magic of those sound posts in violins tuning bridge to body response, beyond my comprehension. Wishing I could compare them all to satisfy the curiosity but mostly, my wallet says "Whatcha got is good enough Riv'!"
Damnit Ted! Most people say that safety never takes a holiday. In my shop, safety doesn't even take a coffee break. Get it together man! HAHA! Great video as always. I have learned so much from you. I thank you sir.
Always, thank you. Your DIY fix-it jigs always get a "yes and amen" from this hack guitar guy. I'll booger mine before I'll touch someone else's. Always learning. Thanks again.
Outstanding work, as usual. Just wanted to mention that after watching your video on replacing the adjustable saddle, on that 60's Gibson, with a tight fitting plug (in case someone wants to put everything back to stock, nothing was permanently altered) I decided to try it my self on my 65 Texan. I'm very happy with it and I couldn't believe the difference it made in the sound. Night and day difference. I actually made a video of it too. I wish I could have afforded to have a luthier do the work, but with the way the world is today, I decided to try it my self. I am very happy with it. Keep up the awesome content.
Just as you said "it's ok don't send them to me", I was thinking, I bet I can send him some transfer punches. It never occured to me that if you wanted a transfer punch you would own them. LOL. Thanks for the content. I love watching it. You've taught me enough to at least setup my guitar.
Outstanding info in the Les Paul world of electric solid archtops! Truth be told, all the Gibson guitars I ever played, I've never liked any of them! Whether acoustic or electric, none could never match up to other makers of other guitars. One instrument they do make that I would love to have is the "A" series of mandolins. The ones I've tried were amazing! Even an A0 was wonderful and my Uncle let me try it and it was hard to put it down and I never was one again. There's others like that by other makers and I own a Martin from the late 60s just before they stopped making them and they have tiny necks. I'm 66 yrs old, and my first and last mandolin will most likely be a Martin with its tiny neck. Maybe a Chinese mandolin will cross my path like a Cort or a Harley Benton. Today it's a Martin.
You inadvertently slipped up and revealed your great guitar playing that it seems you typically sandbag your viewers on. Those are the tasty licks of an Artiste.
I read, or saw in a video where Gibson sets the neck in a Les Paul with the fingerboard on. Apparently that's the wrong method to get a proper fit. Wonder why they don't set the neck, and then put on the fingerboard? I know people will say "Well that's the way they always did it" but you;d think they'd switch it up in that one particular area.
Changing the after length of the string doesn't chance it's tension, but it does affect the strings elasticity. Elasticity is measured over the entire length of the string - as the entire string has to be stretched up to pitch - not just the length of string from nut to bridge.
On the subject of tail piece height, I've noticed that having too steep of a break angle can lead to shortened string life, and tuning issues, especially if the string is contacting the bridge itself, and yes "overwrapping" the tail piece can "fix" that as well and can lead to a "spongier" feel to the strings, it also kills sustain and makes changing strings a total PITA in a dark back stage situation... I might have to try yer bridge chiropractor trick, I have a couple that are starting to sag, and I'd hate to put a shiny new one on, would stick out like a sore thumb
Yeah, not a wrapover fan either, unless it's a wraparound bridge to start with. Also, I never deck my tail piece on an ABR style system anymore and just adjust it slowly until I hit that Goldiclocks point where it just feels great for bends but not so loose the strings are too floppy for picking and chords. Everyone can choose what works for them best, but a full decking seems kinda OTT? Sure, you need a break angle but even a few turns will - IMHO - make your guitar feel and play better with zero effect on the mythical holy grail of sustain and tone :)
hi..i love your vids. just to let u know mate try to find the mccarty interview when he says according to seth lover that they will put screws on p90 pickups to let the customer trying to think that he can adjust the power of the sound..wich got no influence at all .pickup raisers are the only effective way to do it. sorry for my english. i'm french.
What's a new ABR-1? Seventy bucks? Not as if it's a vintage piece I'd pay luthier rate to repair. Of course the physics confirms that extra tensioned length for the same tuned length increases overall tension. DylanTalksTone did a great practical experiment on it a few years ago.
Coin collectors also know about PVC ruining coins lol. The PVC will leach out and actually corrode a coin. You can remove it with acetone, but there will be a pit left behind.
She's aging nicely. Did you share a video of filling that hole in the neck? It looks familiar, though I've seen pretty much every video you've ever shared - even the earliest ones. Hmm... It might be worth revisiting those. I haven't seen 'em in years.
It took me less than 40 minutes to print four pickup shims on my 3D printer. I can make them any height I want and even taper them if needed. Also, printing the part gives you more options in terms of color.
Man I wish I would’ve studied to be a luthier. I’m too old now to start over in life, being 53. I do home repair and I’m really good at it because of being raised by super anal Tool and Die maker who I could rarely impress growing up. It made me a perfectionist. But I really like this kind of work. Maybe in another life. Great job sir. You always impress.
I prefer the sound with the tailpiece right on the body (psychological? maybe) and top wrap specifically to keep the strings above the back of the bridge having learnt a few years ago that it is possible, to my amazement, to bend a girder. Also it is probably no bad thing to keep the wound strings away from anythng that will make the tuning potentially stepped or 'notchy'. Entertaining and informative as always. Thanks.
Come on! Get some plastic and do it right! I bet you can do it with files and sanding blocks rather than a router table with a sketchy OSHA-not-approved power switch.
@fenderlead1, foam weatherstripping deteriorates, corrodes metal, outgasses, and may react with the guitar's finish. DON'T DO IT. I've been repairing vintage audio equipment for decades and dealing with crumbly, or gooey, old foam, and the damage it does to whatever it touches, is one of the worst parts of my job.
@@seanj3667 not about doing it right… I’ll probably still have almost a dozen or so leftover from various Lollar pick up purchases lol. It’s about trying new things and thinking outside the box. Someone else mentioned that the weatherstripping form can break down and off gas. That is a valid point! I’ve been using it for about 10 or 15 years and not seen any issues. That said some of the guitars I have are 65+ years old, in that context 15 years is but a blink of an eye.
Bridge on my les paul is collapsed too, always thought that it will have to be replaced, but it's possible to bend it back? Thank you for your wisdom. Love watching your channel
Yeh, break angle definitely doesn't change the tension, but it does change the stiffness or the effective length over which it stretches. Imagine zero break vs 90 degrees - bending the strings around a corner is much harder to do. Similar story with a locking nut, so I use lighter strings on those guitars.
This is it. The tighter break angle pretty much produces a fixed point at the saddle. Increased tension from bends is not distributed into the length of string between the bridge and tailpiece, giving a stiffer string feel. String tension and stiffness are different things, and widely misunderstood by guitarists.
@@scottishgentlemen6038Of course increased string tension is transferred along the entire tensioned length of the string. Do you think that little bit doesn’t change pitch when you sharpen a string? That’s ridiculous.
@@richsackett3423 you don't think increasing the friction at that point has any effect on it? How else can you explain the change in string feel that Ted mentions?
@@scottishgentlemen6038 No I don’t. Ted’s incorrect. His crack about “the physics” was obnoxious and wrong. DylanTalksTone made a excellent explainer with practical experiments at the end. Check it out. He uses a fish scale.
@@richsackett3423 so i think i watched the wrong DylanTalksTone video, because there was no fish scale. I watched his ep#17, and he does talk in that episode about big break angles introducing points of high friction which reduce the effect of the additional string length - making it less available to stretch than if the string can move freely back and forth over the contact point. I felt similarly about Ted's remarks about "the physics" because if physics disagrees with reality, it just means you've left something out of your physics. Thanks for the recommendation - I'll be watching more of Dylan's content. I like his approach.
If you want to go down the sintra rabbithole: museums use a sintra-like product called Komacel for casework. It's artifact-approved, and thus free of nasty offgassing chemicals, though I'm not sure how thin it goes down - we usually get it in 12 or 19 mm.
20:00 i did the same to the bridge of my 1996 studio that was collapsed much worse (Nashville style). I used only my workbench and a clamp. Worked fine and is disks for two years already. I agree that this way of fixing cannot be fine often but it definitely works for years.
Hey Ted. Would you consider a foot switch controller for your router table? Even if it’s just an inline “e-stop” it would give you something if it ever got away from you.
I think he only has one router and also uses it for more "normal" router work where he holds the router, so any additional wiring would need to not get in the way of that function
This might be a dumb question, but if you have a guitar that experiences a bridge bending like that, would it make sense at all to fit a hardwood shim between the bridge and the guitar body? Would it help maintain the bridge shape or transfer vibration between the strings and body? On a separate note, watching these videos starting sometime around March 2020 (for reasons I suspect we all understand), I got the courage to do some of my own work, even buy some crappy cheap basses and guitars (Squiers, Epiphones) and sell them off, mostly at a loss just for something to do. I recently bought a terrible condition Rickenbacker 4003 from 1983. It had the volume and tone pots, pickup selector, and a body abused more than Keith Richards' body. I have it stripped, almost ready for a pro to refinish and refret (I know my limits) but a lot of the rest of the work I have done or an doing and it has been a great project.
Sean its no dumb question at all, I love the thoughts which arise thinking about it. Things like the ABR-1 idea of the longer thinner 6-32 brass screws transferring vibration deeper into the body than the slightly wider Nashville style on heavier posts into metal collars in the body. And then there's the Babicz full contact bridge taking discovery even further. The magic of those sound posts in violins tuning bridge to body response, beyond my comprehension. Wishing I could compare them all to satisfy the curiosity but mostly, my wallet says "Whatcha got is good enough Riv'!"
Can I really get away with bridge polepieces just 1/16" from the strings? Are P-90 magnets that mild? Other pickups seem to cause warbling if they're closer than 1/8".
Puisheen's vid will be very enlightening. But you can have your cake and eat it by top-wrapping. I don't think it makes a serious difference to anything, but when you top wrap you can have the tailpiece decked and still not have an extreme break-angle. On another note... that's a lovely Classic but were Gibson really using rosewood then? That board is paler than a lot of Pau Ferro and Indian Laurel boards. I have a 2010 Tokai that looks nearly identical (their 'Violin Finish' burst looks just like this) but the board is the colour of dark chocolate.
The piece of technology which likely would benefit you is a small 3 axis cnc router/carver or xtool p2 laser cutter. You could cut risers, pick guards, truss rod covers etc on that and bridges/necks/fret cuts on the cnc. That Gibson sounded amazing
I think i read somewhere that the gibson factory guys would set the bridge break angle the same as the nut break angle. As for P90 spacers i got a variety pack from Lollars;)
Hey Ted, I'd like to make one of those jigs for my LP. What is the radius of the curve on the bottom piece? 12", like the neck? Can I just use the radius on the bottom of the bridge? Or will that radius have been adversely modified by the bending of the bridge? I've got a 1972 LP Standard ( yep, they exist ) and, to my shock and horror, the bridge is exhibiting the same symptoms. And, just because I'm boring and chatty, I inherited a Custom Order L5 with a P90 in the bridge position and a Staple PU in the neck position. The Staple PU was mounted directly to the arched top of the guitar. The pole pieces were absurdly extended to their maximum in a futile attempt to get them closer to the strings. I ended up buying risers from, I think, AllParts, and had to to glue two of them together to get the required height. Then, because the assembly was so rigid, I had to sand the bottom of the riser on the guitar, much like fitting an acoustic bridge, to gat the curve on the bottom correctly adjusted. A long and tedious process as you well know. I then glued a thin layer of felt to the bottom of the riser to protect the finish, just 'cause I'm nerdy and meticulous. It came out great but this was a factory oversight or fuckup or whatever. Gibson is weird this way. Some things they seem to do exceptionally well and then drop the ball on the obvious stuff. So, there. More for you to read and be distracted from doing actual work. Sorry. The point is that I wouldn't have attempted this had I not been following your channel. So I thank you.
I honestly go the other way and top wrap my strings on Les Paul's to give them a more "slinky " feel and slam the tail peice like that, I really prefer that for me anyway, just feels nice!
For router table stuff I do the larger holding jig specifically for things that are kinda small, like your template there. If it's larger I can screw a handle, of sorts, directly to the top of the template that gives me good grip on the piece with my hands a fair distance clear of the router bit. It's a case by case thing depending on what I'm trying to do.
Wow those old Gibson action specs. 8 and 6 for a bass is wild. I like an ordinary middle of the road action around 6 and 4, you can easily go to 5 and 3 if the player has a light touch (or wants the strings to bounce off the frets in some cases) so long as the frets are well finished and the neck is in good shape.
Would it be worth the effort and time to route a shallow channel along the bottom of the bridge and insert a steel bar to help the bridge stay flat longer? How to affix it is best left to your experience - weld? epoxy? I don't know. Nice guitar and interesting fix - got to go see if my Epiphone Les Paul bridge is doing that. But the strings aren't buzzing so maybe ok. Cheers.
I think, and I'm not holding on to one at the moment that there isn't a whole lot of metal to work with, cause the saddles run most of the way through, but you could potentially affix a plate to the bottom and that might help? but in the end the ABR-1's are pretty soft, and pretty cheap to replace, Ted's Chiropractic method is pretty skookum and could probably be deployed several times before failure.
For this kind of stuff, I prefer to make the router templates on the 3D printer. Best of both worlds. No waiting when you're actually in production, accurate size and shapes, and no messed up/weak/shoddy result.
Mike Adams is obsessed with break angle lol. His content was instrumental in me getting a good setup on my jag. Speaking of him, would love to see you work on an offset eventually.
“Don’t do what uncle Ted does…” - Theodorus Woodfordus ca 2023
😅
Theodorus
BC
I mean if anyone can say that, yet do it perfectly, I trust he’s right.
I've encountered the topic of ABR-1 style bridges getting flattened by string tension before... the solution was always either to replace or re-file the saddle nothches to reflect the radius (ie. on StewMac). I've honestly never seen anybody even considering, let alone showcasing, giving a try to straighten the whole bridge, and it's a "so simple that it's embarassing nobody thought of it" moment. I just love how every thing you do goes through the "what can be done in this case and what's the pros and cons of it, what you need to watch out for" thought process that you can clearly explain to your viewers. You're a true renaissance man Ted, both an artist and a scholar to the full extent.
Wow! I just learned something & I've been messing with guitars for 40+ years! Seems like the metal is just too soft for those heavy bottoms maybe. I do know that cast parts can have really uneven grain structure
I keep the original in the case, and go with a Faber bridge.
Genious, yes, though Dan came up with the solution and demonstrated it a long time ago.
I know the bridge is one thing, but I'm also learning about the people who like to top wrap, there's a company called Lightning guitars who makes a very cool tailpiece which gives the best break angle to the bridge with the tailpiece completely seated
"Psychologically damaging to many people"
I felt that.
the reference to Eddie Cochran's Twenty Flight Rock was absolutely brilliant!
I was always a "deck the tailpiece" guy. Then I bought a brand new ES-339 when they came out. It came from the factory with the tailpiece off the deck almost 3/8". I was skeptical at first, but it played like butter and sounded fantastic. I decked it, and the guitar lost something special, so I raised it back up. Now I am a believer in moving it to suit the guitar, the overall sound and feel, the style, and the player. Yet another thing that was absolute to me, now in old age learning that there is nuance in everything, and never believe what the internet tells you without some personal experimentation. Now lets talk about those 7.25" Fender necks...
That Les Paul sounds fantastic at the end there. That warmth with the cleans still just breaking through. Another awesome video!
I love your videos, im a cabinet maker from the faroe islands. 50k people and i love doing repairs.
You have becially educated me in everything. :P thank you man!!
Facing the same P-90 problem, I bought a couple of cheap P-90 covers, and carefully cut the tops off with my bandsaw, creating instant shims. A wee bit of finish work, and they were ready to use. I'm lazy.
Smart
@@GRequinBlanc Probably more lazy than smart, I think.
My Les Paul had bridge sag about 20 years ago and I was able to bend it back with shims and C-clamps on the edge of my bench, approximating the same function as your bench vise jig. At the same time I reduced the break angle and thus the pressure to make the bridge sag by threading the strings into the stop tail backwards and wrapping them over the top. The stop tail is right down on the deck & I still have sufficient break angle that's evidenced by no reduction in tone or sustain. It's held up like this for nearly 2 decades so I guess I must have done something right.
My SG had the same problem after 20 years of high string tension (12s in drop C)
I just replaced the bridge with a Gotoh unit and called it done.
@@jarrusjenkins
I considered that too but I'm a fix it 'til it can't be fixed anymore kind of guy. It often makes no financial sense but that's just how I'm wired.
A new one is seventy bucks.
@@richsackett3423 I got a Gotoh drop in replacement for £25gbp which I thought was worth it because messing about straightening it wasn't worth it.
@@jarrusjenkins Gotoh makes excellent hardware across the board with constantly high value-for-money. My favorite is their 201 Fender replacement bridge.
To be honest, I couldn't ever dream of doing things Uncle Ted does! Thank you so much for sharing!
Thank you for this! I had bought a Casino Worn that I’m coming to realize, needs shims on both pickups (mostly neck). I was just recently trying to find a way around the exorbitant cost of the branded shims and was contemplating making some. Documented procedure “check”! Your show is top drawer by the way. Please keep the great content coming!
That LP has the palest rosewood board I've ever seen!
About the feel of tension vs scale length and break angle, most people seem to miss a couple things. The sharper break angle with a TOM and tail piece offers a little more friction, not necessarily a problem, but enough to feel, combine that with such short string length between the bridge(and therefore the break angle) and the tail piece, and it generally feels a little stiff. More string length after the break angle, like with a string thru, offers more string to be stretched during play, contributing to a loose feel. Neither really represent problems, just things I've noticed between guitar types, stop tail/string thru/double locked/ect, and the way they feel to play.
Cool video as always!
Yeah, the break angle doesn't change the strings' tension but it does change the yield of that little bit of string slack behind the bridge. Bigger the break angle less yield.
You can't have less tension ("looser feel") while maintaining the same pitch. During bends, this "looser feel" would necessarily require you to bend that much further to achieve the same tension required to achieve the same bent note played with the supposedly higher tension created by a sharp break angle. The string can only be one specific level of tension to be a specific pitch and requires a precise level of further tension to be raised to a specific higher pitch. Same pitch = same tension.
I'm having one of those days when when everything seems to be going to shit yaknow, circumstances just piled up and now all i can do is to just curl up in bed a and try to start fixing a goddamn mess when i wake up tomorrow.
Your videos allow me to relax, and to feel good about something even when everything feels like it's getting to be a bit too much for me, so, thank you. You are an artist.
The Les Paul classics from that era were SO cool. I'd love one of the gold tops from that era. They then started doing them with those strange green inlays which I never understood.
Thanks for sharing your knowledge Ted! Great tips!
❤ from the Frozen Northlands! :)
Great tip on the bridge straightening jig. I've the problem in other videos but have never had one come in my shop. Good to know they can be fixed at least once. Thanks Ted.
As I have said before, I love saving your videos for the last thing on a Sunday evening. They are very relaxing.
The factory action settings card was fascinating to see, I have never seen something like that before
I was trying to figure out how you might go about straightening that bridge and realised that a vise would be involved but was just trying to imagine what kind of spacers would work and of course you produced a really well thought out jig for that !
Nice work Ted !
I figured it would be something like what he did, but didn't suspect it would be a common enough problem to have a jig made for it already.
@@seanj3667I would have had the hammers out…
Yup. Hammers. Basic, effective, and especially expressive.
@@joelfildes5544 Haha brutal !
@@Riverdeepnwide …you forgot ‘instant’…
Psycholigcally damaging....good one 🙂. Wonderful work again.
2 of my favorite guitar People Mike Adams & Ted Woodford commiserating 🙂
pretty much all gibson tune-o-matic bridges sag in the middle over time, they're just pot metal. for many years now my routine has been to set one upside down with the ends resting on my opened-up bench vise and _gently_ hammer all over the middle area with my little fretting hammer to sort of "massage" it straight again
that works just fine and i've avoided the idea of straight-up pressing it in the vise for fear that it would crack but it might be time to revisit the idea
Radiusing a floyd rose this way would be an interesting experiment. *I have shimmed several, but for whatever reason it has never performed well so I ended up filing each saddle which produced action that will surpass even hard tail fulcrum tremolos.*
The process was unfortunately ridiculously tedious and the saddle order did not descend from strings 3 and 4 like expected. *3 ended up being lower than 1, but it was worth the effort.* *The day will come soon enough when I do it to more guitars now that you can buy a good quality Floyd for $20 out of China.*
Another ironic story is 20 years ago when there was a guitar player's chatroom full of virtuoso guitarists, someone spent $400 on a brand new, authentic Floyd Rose made in America and it still had all the out of box issues as the ones from China for $35 in those days!
*BTW, the floyds I filed saddles that did the best were oddly enough, string through versions.* I'm working on a mod to convert a locking to string through so the fine tuners can still be used. It's an easy conversion in terms of pulling the bolts and blocks to feed the strings through the bolt hole, but then you have no fine tuners anymore 😒
You could drill a hole trough the fine tuning screws and feed the string trough them, maybe add a washer so that the string can rotate freely (or machine an special screw and insert for this purpose, going between the screw and the string, with some channels for bearing spheres).
@@artbk I have considered doing exactly that now that I have a precision drill press and scrap bridges collected to experiment with, but it will still be a difficult process to coordinate the work and get through the hardened metal.
*Strangely, I have used a lot of fender vintage styled 2-point floating tremolos with no locking parts and graphite or even polished aluminum and brass nuts, and once the strings are broke in, they return to pitch accurately like one would never expect.* What I often did was simply tighten the screws heavily on the knobs and this pressure is enough to make the knob quite rigid to turning by hand, so the string pressure shifts don't budge them whatsoever.
As of the last few years, I rarely ever lock the nut because I've hardly touched the trem bar whereas previously, I would grab it dozens of times throughout the day. *This habit rose from not wanting to deal with fine tuning them lol.* Anyway, with dozens of guitars packed away that need some minor repairs, upgrades or adjustments, it's time to get busy. *I have a few dozen guitars and only one that meets my standards ATM that is worth playing daily.* It's a long story(longer than this one) as to why, but I have always been a stickler for having no less than 3 grab and go electrics at all times and broke that rule a whopping 5 years ago. This does however exclude 3 8-string guitars that used to be my daily players, but it's just an endlessly long story of digressing lol. I will close by making the point that a couple weeks of playing an 8-string daily makes playing a 6 string like a child's toy. My skillset gets so high from the switch that I feel strangely embarrassed like I'm playing with children's toys.
This channel makes me happy😊
Beautiful skills, lovely colour lp and a dash of Radiohead. Voila. Lovely to watch you work, thank you
Sean its no dumb question at all, I love the thoughts which arise thinking about it.
Things like the ABR-1 idea of the longer thinner 6-32 brass screws transferring vibration deeper into the body than the slightly wider Nashville style on heavier posts into metal collars in the body. And then there's the Babicz full contact bridge taking discovery even further. The magic of those sound posts in violins tuning bridge to body response, beyond my comprehension.
Wishing I could compare them all to satisfy the curiosity but mostly, my wallet says "Whatcha got is good enough Riv'!"
3:19 we’ve got shrinkage, Jerry!
I always top wrap my 80 custom..seems to make my strings last a little longer and you can keep the stop piece down to the body.
I top wrapped my lp too. Break angle was so big that strig was touching the bridge... Didn't want to raise the tail piece
Damnit Ted! Most people say that safety never takes a holiday. In my shop, safety doesn't even take a coffee break. Get it together man! HAHA! Great video as always. I have learned so much from you. I thank you sir.
The 20 flight rock reference.. very well played my man.
I love this man so much it's hard to explain. Ted you're a BEAST.
Some guitars just 'sound right'. That Les Paul is one of them.
Always, thank you. Your DIY fix-it jigs always get a "yes and amen" from this hack guitar guy. I'll booger mine before I'll touch someone else's. Always learning. Thanks again.
Outstanding work, as usual. Just wanted to mention that after watching your video on replacing the adjustable saddle, on that 60's Gibson, with a tight fitting plug (in case someone wants to put everything back to stock, nothing was permanently altered) I decided to try it my self on my 65 Texan. I'm very happy with it and I couldn't believe the difference it made in the sound. Night and day difference. I actually made a video of it too. I wish I could have afforded to have a luthier do the work, but with the way the world is today, I decided to try it my self. I am very happy with it. Keep up the awesome content.
3-D printing isn't the solution here. Laser cutting is. You could make a few P90 templates and have the right one cut in moments.
Yes! Laser cutting is wildly fast and practical as well.
Just as you said "it's ok don't send them to me", I was thinking, I bet I can send him some transfer punches. It never occured to me that if you wanted a transfer punch you would own them. LOL. Thanks for the content. I love watching it. You've taught me enough to at least setup my guitar.
Outstanding info in the Les Paul world of electric solid archtops! Truth be told, all the Gibson guitars I ever played, I've never liked any of them! Whether acoustic or electric, none could never match up to other makers of other guitars. One instrument they do make that I would love to have is the "A" series of mandolins. The ones I've tried were amazing! Even an A0 was wonderful and my Uncle let me try it and it was hard to put it down and I never was one again. There's others like that by other makers and I own a Martin from the late 60s just before they stopped making them and they have tiny necks. I'm 66 yrs old, and my first and last mandolin will most likely be a Martin with its tiny neck. Maybe a Chinese mandolin will cross my path like a Cort or a Harley Benton. Today it's a Martin.
You inadvertently slipped up and revealed your great guitar playing that it seems you typically sandbag your viewers on. Those are the tasty licks of an Artiste.
I read, or saw in a video where Gibson sets the neck in a Les Paul with the fingerboard on. Apparently that's the wrong method to get a proper fit. Wonder why they don't set the neck, and then put on the fingerboard? I know people will say "Well that's the way they always did it" but you;d think they'd switch it up in that one particular area.
Your bridge bending jig is gorgeous Ted!
Back in 1988 I made dogear P-90 spacers from a black plastic lunch pail I bought from BiWay.
Changing the after length of the string doesn't chance it's tension,
but it does affect the strings elasticity.
Elasticity is measured over the entire length of the string - as the entire string has to be stretched up to pitch - not just the length of string from nut to bridge.
Beautiful LP!
The fret saw even sounds happy.😊
Finally, a touch of sanity
You da man Ted! Thank you!
Love watching you.GREAT.Many thanks.
On the subject of tail piece height, I've noticed that having too steep of a break angle can lead to shortened string life, and tuning issues, especially if the string is contacting the bridge itself, and yes "overwrapping" the tail piece can "fix" that as well and can lead to a "spongier" feel to the strings, it also kills sustain and makes changing strings a total PITA in a dark back stage situation... I might have to try yer bridge chiropractor trick, I have a couple that are starting to sag, and I'd hate to put a shiny new one on, would stick out like a sore thumb
Yeah, not a wrapover fan either, unless it's a wraparound bridge to start with. Also, I never deck my tail piece on an ABR style system anymore and just adjust it slowly until I hit that Goldiclocks point where it just feels great for bends but not so loose the strings are too floppy for picking and chords. Everyone can choose what works for them best, but a full decking seems kinda OTT? Sure, you need a break angle but even a few turns will - IMHO - make your guitar feel and play better with zero effect on the mythical holy grail of sustain and tone :)
hi..i love your vids. just to let u know mate try to find the mccarty interview when he says according to seth lover that they will put screws on p90 pickups to let the customer trying to think that he can adjust the power of the sound..wich got no influence at all .pickup raisers are the only effective way to do it. sorry for my english. i'm french.
What's a new ABR-1? Seventy bucks? Not as if it's a vintage piece I'd pay luthier rate to repair. Of course the physics confirms that extra tensioned length for the same tuned length increases overall tension. DylanTalksTone did a great practical experiment on it a few years ago.
Coin collectors also know about PVC ruining coins lol. The PVC will leach out and actually corrode a coin. You can remove it with acetone, but there will be a pit left behind.
She's aging nicely.
Did you share a video of filling that hole in the neck? It looks familiar, though I've seen pretty much every video you've ever shared - even the earliest ones.
Hmm... It might be worth revisiting those. I haven't seen 'em in years.
It took me less than 40 minutes to print four pickup shims on my 3D printer. I can make them any height I want and even taper them if needed. Also, printing the part gives you more options in terms of color.
Love plain tops. That's a beautiful one!
daves always talking about not letting the strings bounce off the back of the bridge
Man I wish I would’ve studied to be a luthier.
I’m too old now to start over in life, being 53. I do home repair and I’m really good at it because of being raised by super anal Tool and Die maker who I could rarely impress growing up. It made me a perfectionist. But I really like this kind of work. Maybe in another life. Great job sir. You always impress.
@user-OfficialTwoodfrd what did I win? A paid tuition to luthier school???
I prefer the sound with the tailpiece right on the body (psychological? maybe) and top wrap specifically to keep the strings above the back of the bridge having learnt a few years ago that it is possible, to my amazement, to bend a girder. Also it is probably no bad thing to keep the wound strings away from anythng that will make the tuning potentially stepped or 'notchy'.
Entertaining and informative as always. Thanks.
Excellent timing! Instead of shimming the neck pick up of my casino I’m going to try various thicknesses of weatherstripping foam
Come on! Get some plastic and do it right! I bet you can do it with files and sanding blocks rather than a router table with a sketchy OSHA-not-approved power switch.
@fenderlead1, foam weatherstripping deteriorates, corrodes metal, outgasses, and may react with the guitar's finish. DON'T DO IT. I've been repairing vintage audio equipment for decades and dealing with crumbly, or gooey, old foam, and the damage it does to whatever it touches, is one of the worst parts of my job.
@@seanj3667 not about doing it right… I’ll probably still have almost a dozen or so leftover from various Lollar pick up purchases lol. It’s about trying new things and thinking outside the box. Someone else mentioned that the weatherstripping form can break down and off gas. That is a valid point! I’ve been using it for about 10 or 15 years and not seen any issues. That said some of the guitars I have are 65+ years old, in that context 15 years is but a blink of an eye.
Man that LP sounds amazing
Thanks for the great content, as always! Just curious as to what your fret polish regime entails; sandpaper grits, etc.?
Pay attention, to every word, in every episode.
Bridge on my les paul is collapsed too, always thought that it will have to be replaced, but it's possible to bend it back? Thank you for your wisdom. Love watching your channel
Yeh, break angle definitely doesn't change the tension, but it does change the stiffness or the effective length over which it stretches. Imagine zero break vs 90 degrees - bending the strings around a corner is much harder to do. Similar story with a locking nut, so I use lighter strings on those guitars.
This is it. The tighter break angle pretty much produces a fixed point at the saddle. Increased tension from bends is not distributed into the length of string between the bridge and tailpiece, giving a stiffer string feel.
String tension and stiffness are different things, and widely misunderstood by guitarists.
@@scottishgentlemen6038Of course increased string tension is transferred along the entire tensioned length of the string. Do you think that little bit doesn’t change pitch when you sharpen a string? That’s ridiculous.
@@richsackett3423 you don't think increasing the friction at that point has any effect on it? How else can you explain the change in string feel that Ted mentions?
@@scottishgentlemen6038 No I don’t. Ted’s incorrect. His crack about “the physics” was obnoxious and wrong. DylanTalksTone made a excellent explainer with practical experiments at the end. Check it out. He uses a fish scale.
@@richsackett3423 so i think i watched the wrong DylanTalksTone video, because there was no fish scale. I watched his ep#17, and he does talk in that episode about big break angles introducing points of high friction which reduce the effect of the additional string length - making it less available to stretch than if the string can move freely back and forth over the contact point.
I felt similarly about Ted's remarks about "the physics" because if physics disagrees with reality, it just means you've left something out of your physics.
Thanks for the recommendation - I'll be watching more of Dylan's content. I like his approach.
You're learning more pretty sounding chords.
Thanks for another interesting and informative video.
If you want to go down the sintra rabbithole: museums use a sintra-like product called Komacel for casework. It's artifact-approved, and thus free of nasty offgassing chemicals, though I'm not sure how thin it goes down - we usually get it in 12 or 19 mm.
Hmm. Wire up a footswitch or take a chunk out your finger with a router bit. Decisions, decisions.
I think the point is missed re, the physics... it's not the string tension increasing that makes it stiffer, it's the increased friction.
20:00 i did the same to the bridge of my 1996 studio that was collapsed much worse (Nashville style). I used only my workbench and a clamp. Worked fine and is disks for two years already. I agree that this way of fixing cannot be fine often but it definitely works for years.
Hey Ted. Would you consider a foot switch controller for your router table? Even if it’s just an inline “e-stop” it would give you something if it ever got away from you.
I think he only has one router and also uses it for more "normal" router work where he holds the router, so any additional wiring would need to not get in the way of that function
I changed out my epiphone wildkat dog ear's with Lollar p-90's. The good thing is Lollar has shims pre-cut that they sell pretty cheap.
Ted. I just buy a cheap Stew Mac extra cover and use a belt sander to sand off everything that is not a shim. I think you get it. Easy peasy.
This might be a dumb question, but if you have a guitar that experiences a bridge bending like that, would it make sense at all to fit a hardwood shim between the bridge and the guitar body? Would it help maintain the bridge shape or transfer vibration between the strings and body?
On a separate note, watching these videos starting sometime around March 2020 (for reasons I suspect we all understand), I got the courage to do some of my own work, even buy some crappy cheap basses and guitars (Squiers, Epiphones) and sell them off, mostly at a loss just for something to do. I recently bought a terrible condition Rickenbacker 4003 from 1983. It had the volume and tone pots, pickup selector, and a body abused more than Keith Richards' body. I have it stripped, almost ready for a pro to refinish and refret (I know my limits) but a lot of the rest of the work I have done or an doing and it has been a great project.
Sean its no dumb question at all, I love the thoughts which arise thinking about it.
Things like the ABR-1 idea of the longer thinner 6-32 brass screws transferring vibration deeper into the body than the slightly wider Nashville style on heavier posts into metal collars in the body. And then there's the Babicz full contact bridge taking discovery even further. The magic of those sound posts in violins tuning bridge to body response, beyond my comprehension.
Wishing I could compare them all to satisfy the curiosity but mostly, my wallet says "Whatcha got is good enough Riv'!"
The break angle, while it would not affect the tension, it would affect rotational stiffness of the string.
Can I really get away with bridge polepieces just 1/16" from the strings? Are P-90 magnets that mild? Other pickups seem to cause warbling if they're closer than 1/8".
Gotta try the shellac on the bridge screws, thanks for the tip.
Puisheen's vid will be very enlightening. But you can have your cake and eat it by top-wrapping. I don't think it makes a serious difference to anything, but when you top wrap you can have the tailpiece decked and still not have an extreme break-angle.
On another note... that's a lovely Classic but were Gibson really using rosewood then? That board is paler than a lot of Pau Ferro and Indian Laurel boards. I have a 2010 Tokai that looks nearly identical (their 'Violin Finish' burst looks just like this) but the board is the colour of dark chocolate.
Why not "top-wrap" that Gibson Les Paul bridge?
I agree that is a beautiful Gibson, but what type of wood is that fretboard made of it doesn't look like rosewood but I like it.
I have a 99 Gibson LP Classic. When I bought it 2 years ago, the bridge was also collapsed. I replaced it with a German made ABM one.
The piece of technology which likely would benefit you is a small 3 axis cnc router/carver or xtool p2 laser cutter. You could cut risers, pick guards, truss rod covers etc on that and bridges/necks/fret cuts on the cnc. That Gibson sounded amazing
Xtool are doing sponsorship so maybe worth talking to them
I think i read somewhere that the gibson factory guys would set the bridge break angle the same as the nut break angle. As for P90 spacers i got a variety pack from Lollars;)
Hey Ted, I'd like to make one of those jigs for my LP. What is the radius of the curve on the bottom piece? 12", like the neck? Can I just use the radius on the bottom of the bridge? Or will that radius have been adversely modified by the bending of the bridge? I've got a 1972 LP Standard ( yep, they exist ) and, to my shock and horror, the bridge is exhibiting the same symptoms.
And, just because I'm boring and chatty, I inherited a Custom Order L5 with a P90 in the bridge position and a Staple PU in the neck position. The Staple PU was mounted directly to the arched top of the guitar. The pole pieces were absurdly extended to their maximum in a futile attempt to get them closer to the strings. I ended up buying risers from, I think, AllParts, and had to to glue two of them together to get the required height. Then, because the assembly was so rigid, I had to sand the bottom of the riser on the guitar, much like fitting an acoustic bridge, to gat the curve on the bottom correctly adjusted. A long and tedious process as you well know. I then glued a thin layer of felt to the bottom of the riser to protect the finish, just 'cause I'm nerdy and meticulous. It came out great but this was a factory oversight or fuckup or whatever. Gibson is weird this way. Some things they seem to do exceptionally well and then drop the ball on the obvious stuff. So, there. More for you to read and be distracted from doing actual work. Sorry. The point is that I wouldn't have attempted this had I not been following your channel. So I thank you.
I honestly go the other way and top wrap my strings on Les Paul's to give them a more "slinky " feel and slam the tail peice like that, I really prefer that for me anyway, just feels nice!
For router table stuff I do the larger holding jig specifically for things that are kinda small, like your template there. If it's larger I can screw a handle, of sorts, directly to the top of the template that gives me good grip on the piece with my hands a fair distance clear of the router bit. It's a case by case thing depending on what I'm trying to do.
Wow those old Gibson action specs. 8 and 6 for a bass is wild. I like an ordinary middle of the road action around 6 and 4, you can easily go to 5 and 3 if the player has a light touch (or wants the strings to bounce off the frets in some cases) so long as the frets are well finished and the neck is in good shape.
Great work as always. Very enjoyable. Btw if you ever get tired of fixing guitars you could make a fortune making custom jigs
Thanks Thaddeus. Is that what you go by?
You need your own PBS show. :)
Would you recommend shellac over even weaker loctite like the purple one?
Would it be worth the effort and time to route a shallow channel along the bottom of the bridge and insert a steel bar to help the bridge stay flat longer? How to affix it is best left to your experience - weld? epoxy? I don't know. Nice guitar and interesting fix - got to go see if my Epiphone Les Paul bridge is doing that. But the strings aren't buzzing so maybe ok. Cheers.
I think, and I'm not holding on to one at the moment that there isn't a whole lot of metal to work with, cause the saddles run most of the way through, but you could potentially affix a plate to the bottom and that might help? but in the end the ABR-1's are pretty soft, and pretty cheap to replace, Ted's Chiropractic method is pretty skookum and could probably be deployed several times before failure.
If you remove the plating on the pickup covers does that kill the magic? Ha ha.
Thanks Ted
Pushieen video sounds interesting.
I've been tempted to try stringing a TOM wraparound style, but never pulled the trigger on it.
Can you anneal that bridge? Though I suppose it'd probably affect the plated finish.
Challenge: polishing, polishing, polishing done in the style of the Elvis song clambake.
For this kind of stuff, I prefer to make the router templates on the 3D printer. Best of both worlds. No waiting when you're actually in production, accurate size and shapes, and no messed up/weak/shoddy result.
Word of the day is Bulbous. Maybe a foot switch for the router?
I “deck” the tail pieces on my gibsons for a different reason.., it reduces the likelihood of the tailpiece anchors leaning forward over time.
Mike Adams is obsessed with break angle lol. His content was instrumental in me getting a good setup on my jag.
Speaking of him, would love to see you work on an offset eventually.
That jig for bending the ABR back into shape is clever. 👍