hole in 71 bridge?

[earltwitty]

I'm thinking of getting a Will ray b-bender when I found out I had to put a hole in my 71' bridge. I use the guitar but am wary of f!@##$# up er I mean doing this to it. Seems like a pain. Why can't they make it without alterations? Would this significantly reduce the value of it?

[Big Smokey]

I would buy a replacement bridgeplate from musicians friend for $8.99. If yours is the three way bridge your saddles, pickup, and hardware should fit it perfectly. You can store your original bridgeplate to hold its value. Also If your saddles are the original steel, you should have no problems with the b string cutting into the saddle. If you have brass you may want to consider steel saddles.

[helle_man]

.

I agree with Big Smokey on the replacement ash tray idea.

But honestly, I don't know how you're ever going to put any kind of reliable B-Bender in a guitar without some minor modification to the guitar in some way.

Maybe you should consider a less expensive guitar to put it on?

.

[J. Hayes]

for anything I do to any of my guitars. I have an old Gibson Les Paul about the same vintage as your Tele on which I've plugged the stud tailpiece holes and filled them with wood putty, sanded it flat, drilled a hole through the top into the control cavity to install a ground wire, and installed a Bigsby Palm Pedal. If you love a guitar and it plays great and you want it to be even better, forget about any value. Are you a collector or a player? I'd go ahead and drill the hole into the bridgepiece, how much do you think that'd devalue the instrument? Not very much I'd say. I also have a thirties vintage Gibson F-style mandolin which wasn't getting much use so I bought a Fishman bridge with a pickup in it and installed it on the mandolin, ran the wire through the body to a 1/4" phone jack on the bottom bout. The mandolin gets a lot of action now and just doesn't set there in the case waiting for someone to look at it. It had great action and played much better than my other electrified Fender mandolin so why not make the Gibson usable...............JH in Va.

[earltwitty]

Thanks guys for the advice. I'm not sure what direction I'll take yet. Wow!! was that Will Ray himself answering? Bring the band down to Rochester, NY. sometime !! Folks would love to see the Hellecasters!!!!

[Silverface]

"I'd go ahead and drill the hole into the bridgepiece, how much do you think that'd devalue the instrument? Not very much I'd say"

I'd say you're probably wrong. To a collector it unfortunately makes a heck of a difference, and a notched bridgeplate in a late 60's or early 70's Tele could drop the value a couple hundred bucks. Might not seem fair, but that's what the reality is. And drilling out an endpin/adding a pickup to a 30's F Gibson mando could be a $10,000 dive-bomb "gee, I think I'll use this more" judgement call depending on the model.

You can be a "player" without wrecking a collectable instrument - it just takes good judgement and finding way to do things that are reversible...and don't cause permanent damage.

Case in point - a buddy and I stripped the "ugly paisley" off a '68 Tele in 1972 when it didn't make much difference - about a $5,000 "error in judgement" now. Today if I had the same feeling I'd pull all the parts and mount them on a different body, keeping the paisley body in case I decided to sell the guitar...I could reinstall all the parts, a totally reversible "mod". But stripping is NOT reversible - neither is drilling a bridgeplate, drilling holes in a tweed Bassman to install a master volume, routing a '58 strat to install a 'bucker in the middle....all of which I've seen.

The thing to think about is this - you MIGHT have a great vintage guitar you think is the greatest thing ever, so you're not worried about modding it.

Except eventually you might get tired of it. Or need money. And you've 1) devalued the instrument and 2) taken one more vintage instrument - of which there are a finite number - out of circulation.

As Will said, I'd consider installing a bender on a different guitar - OR, you might play around a bit with neck shims; in my Hipshot installations (used mine on 3 different Teles) I was able to shim every guitar and avoid notching the bridge. It doesn't work with all of them and I got lucky - it's all dependent on the original neck angle, as too big a shim both looks bad and creates a weak point in the neck/body joint, sometimes causing tuning and stability problems. But it you can use small shims to just get over the back of the plate you're fine - and Fender many, many guitar techs use shims to improve bridge downforce, adjust things for odd-fitting necks, etc.

I'd use either of those options before chipping into an early-70's bridgeplate on the original guitar.

[earltwitty]

Where would the shim go? under the bender body? I see your point on modifying an old guitar. But I have put different pickups in it. ( The old ones went kaputz but I still have them) I think I had to put a new 3 way switch in also. Just had it refretted ( 2nd time), new nut. So to a collector I have problems already lololol

[Silverface]

Pickups and switches are reversible mods and maintenance items...not the same as drilling holes or cutting channels, which you can't change.

If you are not familiar with neck shims I'd suggest doing some studying up on guitar maintenance. The shims have nothing to do with the bender; they go in the neck/body joint. Different shims...from matchbook covers to cut-up credit cards to shaved slivers of wood or plastic are used, and which end of the joint the go in depends on which way you want to tilt the neck. A very small shim makes a significant difference at the saddles.

But, you need to know what you're doing. Also, an oft-ignored fact is that Neck screws lose almost half their strength during one round of removal/reinstallation. On vintage instruments, it's a good idea to set the original screws aside, keep them in case you sell the guitar, and install new screws EVERY time you remove the neck. When I was actively doing guitar/amp tech work one of the most common problems (along with busted Les Paul headstocks, aka "Les Paul Disease") was snapped-off Fender neck screws. Easy-outs are a guitar tech's best friend.