Re: 335 upgrade day pics
Ok, to get down to meat and potatoes here, and I don't mean to bombard Seymour W's great forum with my junk, but to be quite honest, this steel bridge and tailpiece sounds about 600%to 1000% better than the stock Gibson Alumiunum bridge and tailpiece- although it was high grade billet machined 1 piece aluminum- not sure about the stock tailpiece) . 'Better', I agree here(although I don't usually agree on the 'tone is subjective' deal) is subjective. I cannot knock aluminum ( or 'aloo- minium' for you Brits), cause that is the tone of so many great classic recordings- it hollow and doesn't have a strong fundamental note like with my steel bridge. For me, the Steel knocks it out of the ballpark, into the next county.Sadly, the playability suffered. I could not ever go back to Aluminum after hearing this, but I don't think this aftermarket steel 'Kluson' brand bridge of this thread was cut 100% to spec?
I was waiting to get this intalled by a pro, but decided that its now or never, and since I may never find a good pro around these parts, I decided to take the plunge an attempt the saddle slot filing myself. .The big deal with this was cutting the bridge slots which were already factory indented, but not deep enough for strings. Now ideally this should be done by a pro! The reason for that being that A) I thought I could cut the 1st high e, and if I made it too deep, I could move it to the middle..well, wrong, you cannot take these saddles out. Also, ideally this should be done with perfect precision, cause you raise or lower the bridge, and all strings are affected equally!
Anyway, I cut the low e too wide, but I was pretty happy altogether, cause it had enough of a V in it where It works perfect ( I'll be adding other ridiculous things pandered on ebay as 'saddle slotting files' as a bonus later to this thread!)
IN short, I think qualkity Nicholson needle files ( at home dept) would have been best. The thjree sided file cuts too wide a swath for the high strings)
I got a stud that is spinning on the high E side. I'll seat that, and hopefully can bring the high e side of the bridge down for closer playability to what the old Aluminum one was was.
One thing I'm gonna throw out there right now FWIW, is all your stock cheap Pot metal Zemac stuff is utter junk sounding,with neither the wherewithall of billet aluminum, Solid brass, or pure steel... and thats IMHO.
Cheers!
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