Semi - Mosrite?

[MWaldorf]

Wow !!! that Looks great!!! Good job Mel !! . What a great help!!! I have parts rite that I need to start ... this is gonna help so much!!! I love this forum!! super coolest..

Thanks for the complements. If I had any idea was would be involved from the start, I wouldn't have had the courage to take on this project, and with the help of the folks here, I managed to put together a guitar I'm very happy with. As an added bonus I learned a whole bunch about luthiery in the process.

So... as much as this helps you, YOUR posting of your experience and process will help the next person down the line, so I encourage you both to ask any and all questions but also to take lots of pictures and post what goes right and what goes wrong. This way we can all learn from our collective mistakes instead of all getting to stumble in the same places.

Mel

[sleeperNY]

Mel:

I bought the 1/4 round guide and the spacing is about like yours with the added small problem of the 1st E slot is cut to large. Not unusable but not quite what I thought I would get. I guess in this day about all that is left is what wasn't used because of some small problem they had with it back in the day.

Jim

[MWaldorf]

A few final touches to my Mosrite project were a Hallmark case and bridge saddles. The case is the usual high quality alligator case, now with purple liner instead of the previous orangey-red. Looks sharp and a nice tight fit for the guitar.

The saddles are from a first generation, non-locking bridge. I had to rethread them to fit the Mosrite bridge, but it worked out very nicely. First, here's the Mosrite bridge with the original angled, non-roller saddles.


Here's the bridge with the Hallmark saddles installed. The screw hole in the Hallmark saddles are slightly higher than in the Mosrite saddles, so the screws touch the tops of the guide holes in the bridge, which works well as it provides additional downward pressure on the saddles.


Angled view of the bridge installed.


Top view of the bridge installed. No rattles, stays in tune and looks right!

[dubtrub]

That worked out great.

Did you get the rear cover plate yet? Hope it fits properly.

[MWaldorf]

Danny,
It's not here yet - that's the final, final finishing touch!
Mel

[ElTwang]

Looks great, Mel. Very much like the Mosrite Excellent saddles. How do you keep the saddles from rocking sideways? I mean, how do you tighten them?

[ElTwang]

And....on a sidenote. What digicam do you use? Your pics a very nice, crisp and clear!

[MWaldorf]

And....on a sidenote. What digicam do you use? Your pics a very nice, crisp and clear!

The camera is a Canon PowerShot SD900. It's a nice mid-line camera. I think the main reasons the photos come out well are that the camera has a close-focus feature and that I try to use ambient room lighting instead of a flash whenever possible.

The Hallmark bridge looks like a mix between a Mosrite and a Rickenbacker bridge. The bridge channel is thicker and more squared off than the Mosrite bridge, but the saddles are rollers like Mosrites. I forget if the Excellents have a single roller saddle type; the vintage mosrites have deeper "V" channels in the rollers for the lighter gauge strings, and the Hallmark doesn't. It doesn't appear to make a difference as the light strings don't move around in the wider channels.

So, thanks to Danny, the final, final finishing touch arrived today - a black rear control cavity plate. Danny got it right with the smooth edges and the bevelled screw holes, unlike the hack plate I'd made. Here's the plate with an enscription on the inside:


And here it is in place!

[MWaldorf]

Looks great, Mel. Very much like the Mosrite Excellent saddles. How do you keep the saddles from rocking sideways? I mean, how do you tighten them?

Oops, I forgot to answer this one. The bar behind the saddles screws into the base of the bridge and presses down on the saddle intonation screws. This keeps the base of the saddles pressed flat against the bridge. With the original saddles there were two that wobbled, and I had to put small paper shims underneath, but since the Hallmark saddles have the screwhole higher up, there is enough extra force to keep all the saddles flat. The fact the intonation screws now touch the top of the front guide holes on the bridge gives another fulcrum for the pressure. Of course, none of this would matter if the Hallmark saddles weren't all evenly machined, which thankfully, they are.

[ElTwang]

That's a pretty clever design! If I was to experiment with my Excellent I would probably try a Hallmark bridge/saddles plus a set of Elliot or Curtis pups. But for now I'll just put a set of 011s on it .

Regarding your digicam. I have to get a new one. Tired of taking crappy pics with my mobile. Maybe I should look into a 2ndHand Canon PowerShot SD900 or a cheaper model that has the same close-up feture.

Looks great, Mel. Very much like the Mosrite Excellent saddles. How do you keep the saddles from rocking sideways? I mean, how do you tighten them?

Oops, I forgot to answer this one. The bar behind the saddles screws into the base of the bridge and presses down on the saddle intonation screws. This keeps the base of the saddles pressed flat against the bridge. With the original saddles there were two that wobbled, and I had to put small paper shims underneath, but since the Hallmark saddles have the screwhole higher up, there is enough extra force to keep all the saddles flat. The fact the intonation screws now touch the top of the front guide holes on the bridge gives another fulcrum for the pressure. Of course, none of this would matter if the Hallmark saddles weren't all evenly machined, which thankfully, they are.