Top 5 Bridge Mods for Better Playability

There are two points of your guitar that are vital to its playability. The first is the nut, located at the head of the neck, which controls string height and spacing from the beginning of your fretboard. The second is your bridge, the second point of your scale length. Your bridge controls the strings’ intonation (how in tune each note plays up and down the fretboard when each fret is pressed down), spacing (the gap between strings that allows each string to resonate free from the others), and action (the distance each string gravitates from the frets). Bridge materials and construction can also affect your tone and sustain.

The first guitar bridges were fairly simple, but they were nearly impossible to keep in functional shape without major wear. Wooden bridges would rot, and metal smooth bars could only provide so much correction. But through trials and tribulations came innovation. Today’s guitar players have the best advantages of technology and engineering to allow parts to dial in more accurate intonation, action, and string spacing. Let’s take a look at some modifications and improvements you can do to your bridge to improve your tone, playability, and much more.

Graph Tech Saddles and You (Partners in Freedom)

Graph Tech has you covered for electric guitars. Their String Saver line of products is made with materials infused with graphite to keep your strings in tune and prevent them from breaking. If your guitar’s bridge is loaded with sharp edges, then this could be a great investment. These replacement saddles are made for both Fender-model saddles found on Stratocaster and Telecaster guitars, PRS, and Tune-o-matic bridge saddles.

Upgraded Saddle (Graph Tech or Bone)

Graph Tech has you covered with acoustic guitars as well. Unlike the bridge of an electric guitar, which consists mostly of metal, the bridge of an acoustic consists of a piece of wood carved with holes for the strings to sit within the body, held down by pins, and a slot for the saddle. The saddle of an acoustic guitar is crafted to keep string alignment and intonation correct. If you think the saddle of your acoustic needs improvement, consider an upgraded saddle. Two of the most common materials for saddle upgrades are bone and TUSQ — a synthetic composite material infused with graphite. Both materials are available from our Guitar Repair Shop if you would like an upgrade. We’ll even make the upgrade on a newly purchased instrument from our warehouse before it is sent to your home! Check out our TUSQ acoustic products here.

Ghost Saddle Upgrade (No Exorcism Required)

Ever listen to a really smooth tone that sounds almost acoustic and wonder why that tone is coming from an ESP LTD BB-600? It’s due to one of two things: either pure magic or (100% more likely) a piezo system. A piezo is a high-quality system that uses the vibration of your strings against the saddle to produce an acoustic tone from your electric instrument. These are commonly found on PRS custom models and used with blends to create a more robust and warm tone outside of your typical electric pickup’s ability. These saddles are also referred to as ghost pickups for their hidden wiring. With these, you most generally do not know whether an electric guitar has a piezo system until you hear it or ask, “What does this button do?” while pointing confusedly at the extra switching. These can provide an astounding amount of depth to your sound and are best paired with reverbs and clean-driven amplifiers.

Bigsby with Vibramate (Stick, Meet Spark)

The Bigsby is almost a household name at this point. These tailpiece replacements are famous for their big, subtle bending and synonymous with rockabilly. But this big ol’ hunk of metal isn’t just for country music. Players of all genres take up Bigsbys to achieve subtle bends with longer sustain from the aluminum construction.

What if you have a Les Paul you love very dearly, but you don’t want to mark the top, even though you are desperate for that Bigsby-bending love? Vibramate can help with that. If you have a US-made Bigsby, Vibramate has made a plate for you. Most commonly, you may find the V5 plate. The Vibramate V5 uses either US or metric threaded screws (both included) to fix the plate to the body using your guitar’s existing tailpiece studs. The Bigsby fits on top of the Vibramate and is attached using the included machine screws through the Bigsby’s screw holes into the threaded holes of the Vibramate plate. No muss, no fuss. There is a Vibramate plate for nearly every US Bigsby, so no guitar is left out. Even the Jazzmaster/Jaguar has its own mounting plate to replace the offset trem.

And if you’re not a fan of the stringing method of a Bigsby, take a look into the Vibramate String Spoiler. This repositions your ball ends from the underside of the Bigsby to the back, making string changes that much easier. You can learn more about Vibramate at vibramate.com.

Hardtail Your Tremolo (Who Needs Dive-bombs?)

The best way to deal with a fire is to snuff it out at the source. If you find your tuning stability to be nonexistent, your sustain to be lackluster at best, and you’re just not using the tremolo, it’s best to take it out of the equation entirely.
If you’re using a Stratocaster-style tremolo, all it takes is a block of wood and some sanding. Sand it to fit in between the cavity and your trem block, loosen your back claw to press the wood between your trem block and cavity, and you’re set. Change the strings and bend away.

With Jazzmaster/Jaguar trems, you can easily just keep the arm off or replace the spring in the trem mechanism with a large rubber or plastic washer. As another option, Faction Guitars offers stainless steel plates to fit over the same route and hardtails your offset without extra modding. They also have some other good replacement plates for Jaguar controls, Telecaster controls with alternate switches, and replacement plates for Marauders.

For Floyd Rose users, all is not lost. The Tremol-No system gives you a variety of options on how your Floyd operates. You can use it as normal, lock down a point to have it only down tune your strings, or use it to lock it completely up and have a hardtail like a Strat. Or call Doyle Wolfgang von Frankenstein and ask if he’ll mod your Floyd to a hardtail.

Bonus: Roland GK Kit (1,001-trick Pony)

While it’s not technically a bridge mod, it does work very similar to how a piezo works. So yeah, we’re talking about it! The Roland GK Kit is a polyphonic pickup (one pickup for each string) that slides under your strings right next to the bridge. This system picks up each string separately and sends those six analog signals down the 13-pin cable to plug into a MIDI guitar interface like the Roland GR-55 or Boss GP-10, which do the pitch-to-MIDI conversion for each of the six strings. Why be just a guitar player when you can be a multi-instrumentalist? Plus, you can use this for your studio setup and save precious space. It’s worth giving a look if you want something new in your recordings, even if you find everything outside of a fretted neck to be Greek to your fingers.

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