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starr36
Platinum Member
Canada
1172 Posts |
 Posted - 02/07/2007 : 18:14:20
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i don't know how many of you guys fool with your guitar settings very much (stop bar height from body on a LP, removing / swapping pivot posts on a strat tremolo) using brass nuts etc.
here is my magical find of the week. if you have a les paul or gibson guitar read this!
i borrowed a book from the library about setting up your guitar. one thing the autheor (Dan Erlewine) said about LPs was the stop bar height, and there are basically two ways to go about it.
1. Some players say the guitar sustains better with the stop bar tight to the body and
2. some say it sound better not screwed to the body.
(ONE CAVEAT, depending on the set angle of your neck, you may not be able to set the stop bar flush because the strings will rest on the back corner of the bridge, thereby seriously interfering with the string vibaration transfer to the body).
The thought is that if the stop bar is "floating" off the body, its a little loose in the threads and allows for a nice transfer of the string vibrations to the body; the other thought is if it is tight, the string energy is transferred directly to the soundtop increasing sustain.
OK, so i took my LP out and checked this, and my stop bar was low, and two strings were definitely resting on the back of the bridge (E and A and part of D, and part of B), i could see that lowering stop bar to the body was not an option so I raised it, quite a bit, to make sure ALL strings were say at aleast .5mm away from teh back of the bridge.
WOWEEEE< I could not believe the change in tone, it really really added and brightened up the sound, more like an acoustic guitar sound to it. for two minutes with a BIG screwdriver and quickly re-checking the intonation (because the string length was slightly shortened by moving stop bar up) it was well worth the read of the book to try a 'non-destricutive' experiment.
normally I would just put the guitar down after a few minutes and go back to my family stuff (3 kids you know) BUT I COULDN'T PUT THE GUITAR DOWN FOR 2 HOURS!!!!!
now b4 you'all run out and try this, BEAR IN MIND THAT, any adjustments to BRIDGE HEIGHT (saddle height) and string anchor location WILL CHANGE THE TENSION ON TEH NECK TOO (and possibly bugger up your action and neck relief) so unless your guitar is PERFECT, or you don't mind shelling out $100.00 to get it professionally setup after you muck it up, i would recommend that you get a guitar setup book and have fun seeing how small adjustments make a BIG change in sound.
my apologies to you gearheads who are shaking your head over this but I never really really studied how the strings were possibly contacting the back of the bridge, never occurred to me till i looked. I further figured out that, this is why those TRAPEZE tailpiece goldtop LPs are so highly sought after, is because of the extra resonance BEHIND the bridge that ads to the guitars sound! |
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guitar setup
