bridge question

[zak]

Here's something I've been wondering about for a while...

Bridge placement in relation to the bridge pickup - or would that be bridge pickup placement in relation to the bridge? Ok...

On some Mosrites the bridge is so close to the bridge pickup that the nuts on the end of the saddle adjustment screws butt right up against the pickup, preventing the bridge from "rocking" on its posts, like this:





On other guitars, the nuts barely even overlap the mounting ring, leaving room for the bridge to rock, like a Jazzmaster or Jaguar bridge:



On some guitars it's REALLY far from the bridge pickup:



And on others it's so close that the nuts need to be on the other side!



Is there any rhyme or reason to this? Was it intentional or was someone just eyeballing it at the factory?
The bridge looks like it was designed to move back and forth a little bit, but on some guitars its placement in relation to the pickup prevents this.

When I got my Japanese "Excellent" it had the bridge backwards, with the nuts facing the tremolo, allowing the bridge to move. It was a tuning nightmare, so I flipped the bridge to its correct position with the nuts butting up against the pickup and the tuning has been stable as can be ever since.

[dubtrub]

Zak,

Back about three years ago when I was getting ready to build my first Mosrite project guitar, I didn't have any reference guitars accessible so I started saving pictures off the internet. I too found the many different locations of the rear pickup in relation to the bridge interesting.

There are couple of things that come into play here. One, the pickup routing did not leave a whole lot of room to move pickups back and forth. Maybe a 1/16th of an inch (if that). Two, the center line of the bridge must be located as close to or exact as possible from the 12th fret in order for the guitar to be able to be intonated.

The other thing that comes to mind would be, although these guitars were production assembly line built, many aspects of production consisted of hand fitting. Considering the average employee was merely some one that applied for a job and got hired and not luthiers. They were taught how to accomplished their individual task of the assembly line process with 'on the job training'. I don't think you would find these discrepancies by Semie Moseley if he was the one actually building the guitar. I know that the few days when I worked at the factory in the summer of 1966, my first paint jobs were far from perfect, but yet they went right on through the assembly line.

[MWaldorf]

OK, not exactly on topic, but does anyone have any idea what the design intention was behind the staggered string placement on the vibrato bar?

I mean, this didn't happen by accident. Obviously it affects the string angle over the bridge, but I can't figure out what the advantage is for the break angle for any given string.
Anyone?

[ElTwang]

Good question, Mel. Been wondering about the same thing.....maybe Semie M. had the bridge and vibro-design just as he wanted it and then realised he had make it that way to make it work right

[Strat-o-rama]

The Shade vibrato has exactly the same thing, as found on the Hallmark 60 Custom. I was wondering why the string holes in the block were not in a straight row.

[dubtrub]

According to the 'old school of reasoning', each string being of different diameter, required different amounts of movement to acquire a balanced amount of vibrato when strumming a full chord. This may or may not be true as Fender and Bigsby never seemed to have any difficulty.

Try picking each string individually while using the vibrato and you will hear that there is a very slight difference in the amount of pitch change on each string. What ever the reasons for the 'off centered' holes, they seem to work fine.

[Dennisthe Menace]

Dubtrub wrote:

According to the 'old school of reasoning', each string being of different diameter, required different amounts of movement to acquire a balanced amount of vibrato when strumming a full chord.

I read somewhere (American Guitars?) that Semie had done this in the hope of when depressing the arm,
the pitch would go down with the strings still in tune with each other.
e.g. Starting off with an "A" Bar Chord on the 5th Fret, depressing the arm until it is now "Ab,"but still in tune.
I tried this once, and it was very, very close. But it also might depend on what gauge strings you are using as well.
But there seems to be a "common ground" between the offset drilling for the strings at the vibrato tailpiece and
the intonation setting for the string saddles

[Dennisthe Menace]

I don't remember which thread the 'funny looking' bridge was posted on, but here's a blow up of it. It actually looks like it might work, and the other pic that we had (where ever that is) might of shown this bridge with the pieces not assembled correctly......
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... otohosting