Hey Boris

By your own admission, you're trying to provoke a reaction to some of your posts. So come on, lets talk.

You think American Standard and American Series bridge plates are cereal grade toneless garbage. But, brass can give curly ductile swarf or it can fall off like powder depending on what composition it is. Niether makes it a bad material. Like 300 series stainless, it has no magnetic function. So tell me, what makes it so rubbish?

The American Series block saddles you hate so much are just carriers for the strings like the brass, threaded steel or pressed steel saddles Fender have used over the years. They all make contact with the bridge via steel. Nothing else. So what makes them so bad?

:roll:

Gunfight at the OK Corral ????.......:wink:

wow it looks like its gonna be hot here:sad: :idea: ..btw there is nothing wrong with the bridge unless the saddles are lacking a mass.. this is really based on my experiences. Thats why 3 saddles bridges playing so well and thats why 6 saddles bridges with MASSIVE steel or titanium saddles play even better.. and vintage 6 saddles like on 70`s teles lacking tone.. sorry thats really thats only my personal taste

By your own admission, you're trying to provoke a reaction to some of your posts. So come on, lets talk.

You think American Standard and American Series bridge plates are cereal grade toneless garbage. But, brass can give curly ductile swarf or it can fall off like powder depending on what composition it is. Niether makes it a bad material. Like 300 series stainless, it has no magnetic function. So tell me, what makes it so rubbish?

The American Series block saddles you hate so much are just carriers for the strings like the brass, threaded steel or pressed steel saddles Fender have used over the years. They all make contact with the bridge via steel. Nothing else. So what makes them so bad?

A lot of guys my age have patterns of hearing loss, some more at some frequencies than others. There's apparently a good bit of reception for me, however, right at the frequency emphasized by steel saddles, most especially those big American Series brick or block types. These big suckers make my ears ring really bad. So, while the steel saddles don't sound "bad" in any inherent sense (kinda searing, I would personally say), ringing ears = bad and thus for me, steel saddles are the wrong choice. No, they don't sound dull or depressed like a graphtech saddle or a Highway One chromed pot metal saddle does, but a guy can withstand only just so much tinnitus.

Now, as for the Am Se plate. I like brass as a tone metal, preferably brass with no or virtually no lead in it. I'm eagerly awaiting the second half of my www.taipantone.com order which contains, you guessed it, brass Tele half bridges. I love brass saddles, and I love the brass "ferrel" block for G + L ASAT Classic I already got from Vince.

After much trials (but no guitars bought) I have come to really like the new American Standard bridge plate. I prefer the sound of it. Still brass, but now the plate is thinner and from a different contractor and I am told a different type of brass. I will predict a strong movement on the part of Am Se (and "old" American Standard) Tele players to retrofit to the '08 and newer Am Standard plate. So, just to clarify, I don't like the cereal grade plate on a '98 "Standard" but I do like the better brass plate on a '09 "Standard".

Speaking of non-magnetic, I do have 3 stainless bridge plates from Glendale. I do like both the sound of cold rolled steel and also premium stainless non magnetic steel. Since between those 2 materials a lot of sound difference is the bridge pup's reaction to whether the bridgeplate is magnetic or not, I haven't really sussed that all out yet. I haven't learned that "language" yet, so bear with me.

To summarize my issues with the American Series (and old Standard) Tele plates:

1) I hate long plates anyway, so almost in the doghouse right there;

2) Wrong mounting and string through configuration, more bad feelings;

3) The saddle mount holes are offset, preventing an easy 3 barrel mod using the spaces between the existing holes;

4) Amongst all "long" bridges, this giant chrome slab is the least well suited to a 1950's shaped guitar of any plate I have seen, aesthetically. It is like where people stuck a 1969 facade on an historic building. Yuck;

5) I think this plate is thicker than it should ever have been - someone was afraid of squeal and they hit the squeal with a 10 ton sledge hammer; and

6) The grade of brass, chosen for how easily it could be formed into a bridgeplate, is no-account, sucky, cheesy brass.

I'm sure I missed a couple points, but that's enough for now. :cool:

The new American Standard plates (2008 and forward) only fall down on the first 2 counts - but that's 4 categories it has got fixed. I like that.

Amen to that... Guys, I'm getting thirsty, let's play some...

Boris,

If your wife slipped a couple of AmSe steel blocks on a guitar you'd setup with 8505 brass blocks, would you even notice? And if you did, could you pick them out? If you'd just fitted a set of 8505 blocks to a guitar expecting an improvement, you may percieve one but I believe that's as far as it goes. It's one of those fairy tales like swapping bridge pins on acoustics. A substantial change in mass or to a different material completely (nylon for example) would make a noticable difference. I'll go with that.

The same for the brass bridge plates. The brass for your vintage saddles will be easy to machine with lots of zinc and possibly a TINY amount of lead. Try and bend it cold and you're stuffed. That's why the bridge plate brass has slightly less zinc. Both the AmSe and AmSt plates will be a very similar if not exactly the same grade. So you endorse one kind of brass for you're saddles as blissfully tonefull, but find another with slightly less zinc for your plates, toneless. That's bonkers.

There may be a contact/coupling argument with a thicker plate (less compliant) but get a steel rule across a brass plate and a Tele body and it ain't the plate that's not flat. If there is a coupling issue, the AmSt plate addresses this with the 2 extra screws; another reason why I love it.

People come here seeking advice and I don't think it's useful to be told to ditch bridge hardware because it's crap.

Edited to add......when it's not crap. I'm with you on point 3.

5 and 6 are your opinions and the rest are visual or trying to integrate it to something vintage but not bad. Not really.

I'd be in serious trouble if my wife even touched a guitar. My girlfriend would.....uh.....
Well, I'd be a dead man. Actually, I don't have a wife.

I do have comedic things happen where I'm playing guitar X and it is: "wow, this isn't bad at all" and then I realize I picked up the wrong one.

Fender insists the composition of the new plate is different. All my sources insist it is a different contractor. Everyone agrees it is substantially thinner. If a Glendale sounds different from a Joe Barden sounds different from a Callaham, why shouldn't the new Standard bridge plate sound different? At least to some people?

The brass I'm using isn't that easy to machine, actually. Sometimes I wish it was. At least it isn't titanium.

Because it's an identical or similar brass of a similar thickness, that's why and you're not changing to a magnetic steel of half the thickness, that's why.

Are you now saying you can pick out a vintage style carbon steel Barden from an equivalent Callaham or Glendale? :confused:

I give up.

Please do give up.:mad:

Please do give up.:mad:

:lol: LOOK OUT.....MUPPETS

Please do give up.:mad:

Yes PLEASE DO. On a side note, get out and play a Barden, Glendale, a vintage fender ash-tray bridge, And Callaham right next to an American Series setup and THEN try to say thay you can't tell a difference. HUGE DIFFERENCE! I've tried all of them, and I Like Glendale's stuff the best by far. It doesn't make me and Boris a##holes, we simply know quality and we know what we like!:!:

There are some things out there, that I hear and I know others don't. When you're in a pizza parlor and the bass line of a song is there coming out the speakers and only you can hear it. You mention the name of the song to 8 people and they all say "whaa..?.".

It is a cold fact there are other things I cannot hear and others can. I believe the safest course is to understand that different folks hear things differently from one another and also their tastes differ. I like Morrissey's voice but I understand that others cannot stand it. I understand women get weak when they hear Rod Stewart's voice; I dunno why but I accept the fact. I know people who still think Michael Jackson is great when I think he belongs gagged and in jail; this is the world of diversity.

I'm glad I like what I like; I'm glad I don't have to like what others like, unless I actually do like it. No problem, really. There is just no way that the old Am Se bridge could've lasted this long if NOS59 and some others didn't like it.

But why hold back when can do this?

http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t25/Bubbanov/23FEB202009001.jpg

But why hold back when can do this?

http://i156.photobucket.com/albums/t25/Bubbanov/23FEB202009001.jpg

Hi Boris

Which bridge is that? It looks like jewelry & I bet it sounds great too.

Just as a side note, I first saw your post at the strat site. Then I saw you were here also. Just wanted to say frankly, you are an great guy. You are always quick to give good and friendly advice. I'm always eager to see your opinion on all things guitar.

Thanks for all you do!

-Ray (da geek)

Hi Boris

Which bridge is that? It looks like jewelry & I bet it sounds great too.

Just as a side note, I first saw your post at the strat site. Then I saw you were here also. Just wanted to say frankly, you are an great guy. You are always quick to give good and friendly advice. I'm always eager to see your opinion on all things guitar.

Thanks for all you do!

-Ray (da geek)

Thanks, Ray. Just trying to learn along the way.

That's just a Stew Mac chromed steel import # 0099 bridgeplate, with the intonation length holes enlarged to 9/64ths and 6 small (5/64ths works nice) replacement holes about 2.08 inches on center. And some pirdy Callaham enhanced vintage brass saddles. The bottom of the Stew Mac plate has been sanded, ala Dr. Mark Davis, as flat as possible. You gotta be careful or get lucky because you're drilling 4 virgin mount holes in that nice American Series Telecaster body and doweling and redrilling would be no fun at all.

Boris,

Does that E/A saddle provide a smaller difference between the E and A (break points where I've drawn the red lines), than the B/E saddle? Or is it just a shadow effect?

If the break points are where I've drawn the red lines and the two saddles differ that much, you'd probably get better intonation by swapping those two saddles. If you look at a set of Glendales you'll see this kind of difference, with the wider spread being the one Dale designed for the E/A. And if you measure the string breakpoint differences between string pairs as angles on a properly intonated 6-saddle set, I think you'll see the same difference.

Here's (http://www.tdpri.com/forum/tele-tech/34979-saddle-compensation-angles.html) an old thread I started about the angles of various compensated saddles. The Stewmacs I had back then had 4 degree angles, but the Glendales were 7, 6 and 3.

The guitar is in Florida, and today I'm in Louisiana.

I dug out one of my homebuilts with a Callaham bridge and saddles assembly on it and see if the result is different. My recollection was, that the Callaham enhanced vintage saddles, like the Barden and Glendales, are specifically marked as to where they belong. The Glendale is even designed in such a way the saddles cannot be switched since the height legs are canted to stay away from the bridge mount hardware. But the Callaham E-A and B-treble E are in fact flat on the underside, no canting of the height legs.

And the break point on the A and the treble E are in fact identical - a line running through the top portion of the bore for the right hand side screw legs in both cases. And they're reversible in fact I find. The break line on the bass E and the B fall through the exact same zone. Not only that, but the D-G looks the same, exactly the same as each saddle addresses the length intonation screw at ninety degrees. Other than being stamped, they appear totally interchangeable!

So the lines you thought you saw where shadows, but we learned something interesting anyway. :grin:

Boris, you are a very classy guy. Thanks for all you contribute to this forum.