My customer saved this bass bridge from another instrument and apparently got its Full Circle pickup/adjusters mixed up at some time. One screw (the active one) is now 1/4"-20 (the one that I recommend) and the other is 6mm metric thread. When it was placed on the other bass, it had a set of brass adjusters and a much lower projection.
I decided to add two shims over the adjusters and to fill the old holes with wooden dowels.
Then I reinstalled the Full Circle in my usual way (threads up) because my customers prefer that the Full Circle be installed with the hot side facing the instrument's top plate. Since one of the threads is metric, and I didn't have a spare 1/4" x20 wheel, I decided to add a small aluminum threaded nut in the bridge leg. Metric thread doesn't hold in wood as well as the inch thread does.
For the 1/4"x20 side, I usually cut the threads, wet them with cyanoacrilate glue and cut again once dried. This is enough to make the threads stronger.
In my area, there are no extremes in humidity, so adjusters aren't strictly necessary, but many players like to have a little choice in string action, especially if they play different styles or if they change between different kinds of strings.
I try to explain, however, that bridge adjusters are not for setting the string action (as it would be in a guitar's Tune-O-Matic) but for compensating for the humidity changes. If one wheel is set much higher than the other, the bridge top will go off-center relative to the fingerboard and this will unbalance the string height again.
No comments:
Post a Comment