The Guitar Gallery Forums - The Guitar Legacy of Matsumoku

OK , let me say up front that I love my Uncle Mats guitars. I currently have 8 of them and they're undoubtedly some of the finest mass produced instruments ever made, especially those necks!

That said, what the hell was our beloved Uncle smoking when he designed those stupid brass barrel-saddle bridges?!
I have just finished adjusting the neck and action on my Vantage AV325 ( http://www.matsumoku.org/ggboard/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=5248 ) and I was feeling all pleased with myself and the the results.

THEN I noticed where the strings were!
Both E's were tapered relative to the fretboard edge, and a couple of others had irregular spacing! ARRGGGHHH!
I had been concentrating on neck, string height and intonation so much it had escaped my awareness until that moment!

It shouldn't have come as a surprise though, it's not like I haven't just gone through the same bloody thing not so long a go on my Westone Thunder I-A ( http://www.matsumoku.org/ggboard/viewtopic.php?f=20&t=5063 ). That drove me nuts too and I'm not looking forward to the next string change!

I play mostly rhythm so I don't often need to venture wa-a-a-y up the neck, but when I do, I expect my fingers to find a string under them! Is that too much to expect?

This freakin' saddle arrangement is completely idiotic and nonsensical. The strings are forced to be bent and twisted, in, around, and over, all manner of obstacles with the consequence that thy cannot follow a straight line from entry point in the bridge to the the corresponding nut slot. It is maddening beyond reason to try and achieve a parallel set of strings. If you're really lucky the E strings will stay on the fretboard all the way down!

So, the question:
Is there a solution to this stupidity? A recommended replacement, of the saddles perhaps? Or a straight swap out with another bridge altogether? I have two otherwise great playing guitars that suffer from this shoddy design. I don't know the Mats' bridge designs well enough to know technically what is compatible with what. Any experts out there care to weigh in on this?

_________________
"A little song, a little dance. A little seltzer down your pants." -Chuckles the Clown
Guitars: https://legend.barryeames.com
Music/Pix/Videos: https://getback.barryeames.com

Hi Barry and glad you have stuck around. It looks to me like the problem is not brass barrel sadle but the location of the hole for the string. Would it be possible to drill new ones that would give the string a striaght run?

Thanks.

If you have the patience to read through the 3 "pages" of discussion on the Westone link you'll see that the same question was also asked there. Unfortunately it's not as straight forward a solution as that...no physical space to drill without first filling in the existing holes. Then you still have the obstacle of the intonation spring to get past. Just too much fiddling for an non-guaranteed result. It's a really ludicrous design!

I think Polly's idea of trying to replace the saddles with something more like the later Vantages or Spectrums would work...if I can locate something suitable. Otherwise a complete replacement would be nice, but I don't know what the chances are of finding one in brass.

_________________
"A little song, a little dance. A little seltzer down your pants." -Chuckles the Clown
Guitars: https://legend.barryeames.com
Music/Pix/Videos: https://getback.barryeames.com

Hey, what about something like these - they're off my Electra X195; would they work, do you think?

I think that's the right idea John. In fact, I'm currently looking at replacement bridges on eBay (where else?).
These look promising:
BRASS
http://cgi.ebay.ca/HARD-TAIL-BRIDGE-for-Fender-strat-BRASS-fixed-trem_W0QQitemZ230366899524QQcmdZViewItemQQptZGuitar_Accessories?hash=item35a2efed44&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14#ebayphotohosting

GOLD PLATED
http://cgi.ebay.ca/HARD-TAIL-BRIDGE-for-Fender-strat-GOLD-fixed-trem_W0QQitemZ220466246839QQcmdZViewItemQQptZGuitar_Accessories?hash=item3354cff4b7&_trksid=p3286.c0.m14

I have no idea if they'd directly replace for the entire bridge or not, they're for a Strat, but perhaps I could use the saddles and get rid of those %^&*# barrels!

_________________
"A little song, a little dance. A little seltzer down your pants." -Chuckles the Clown
Guitars: https://legend.barryeames.com
Music/Pix/Videos: https://getback.barryeames.com

If it makes you feel any better, plenty of other manufacturers made guitar bridges with barrel & barrel-style saddles that are too wide to intonate correctly with light string gauges.

I have an Al-neck Kramer & experience the same problem with it. I bought it mainly because the neck suits my personal preference as close to perfect as any I've found (it's a wide, fat oval with softened fretboard edges). Because of the way the bridge plate is made (there are grooves for the height adjustment screws to ride in & the intonation screws are offset), I can't swap out the saddles, & I haven't found a replacement bridge that would be anywhere close to fitting (too much routing & drilling involved).

If I'm not mistaken, most of those bridges were made before extra-light & extra-extra-light string gauges came into fashion. When setting the intonation for medium & heavy gauge string sets, there was enough stagger from saddle to saddle that no two saddles lined up side-by-side, so there was no problem.

The sad thing is that some manufacturers--who were basing new models around older designs--didn't take this into consideration on some of their new models (which were basically designed to emulate earlier guitars) built even after extra-light strings caught on.

If you're not averse to trying to heavier strings, using a .013 set & staggering the saddles will get you close, if not dead-on.

The saddles on my Al-Kramer are staggered like this:

The low E is farthest from the nut (actually the zero fret). The next two strings are staggered diagonally, with the A forward of the E & the D forward of the A. The G saddle is behind the D, & the G, B, & E stagger diagonally with the high E being closest to the nut.

Thanks for the info slo-hand but it's not really an issue of string gauge. Heavier strings just make it worse. It's more like bad geometry and lousy design.

Looking at the "before" and "after" pix you can see there's always a trade off between getting the strings parallel and forcing them into unnatural positions. Here's the Thunder's current set up; the Avenger is even worse:

"Before"-for example, the top E string is straight but misses the notch and runs against the set screw (typical problem)


"After" -compromised solution- strings are offset to the notches


No matter what you do there's no way to give the strings a straight line from ball end to the nut and keep them parallel to the fret board.. The notches are not even located correctly. Staggering the barrels won't help as they are designed to run in their double tracks. And it wrecks the intonation. Heavier gauge strings only make it worse--less flexibility to bend or jog them into position.

_________________
"A little song, a little dance. A little seltzer down your pants." -Chuckles the Clown
Guitars: https://legend.barryeames.com
Music/Pix/Videos: https://getback.barryeames.com

If it were me, I'd run the strings in the slots and forget about it unless you have problems with strings breaking. I have an old fender musicmaster with similar issues but it poses no threat other than being ugly. Actually, I guess it makes me look better by comparison. . . Ok, maybe not.

I wish appearance was the only concern Jorg but it isn't. The strings are not parallel and, as you can maybe pick up in this next series of pix of the Avenger AV325, the E strings are in danger of wondering off the fretboard altogether, even in the notch!





I did a rough measurement using my steel rule (no calipers, sorry) and the bridge width on this guitar looks like 750 mm. More of a guess is the string spacing which "looks" like 11.2 mm or standard American measurement from what I understand. This is stock Strat size I believe. That would seem to make sense since Vantage and Westone seemed to have used standard American sizing for other things like knobs for example. (The newer Japanese designs apparently use 10.5 mm.)

I've got the neck, action and pups, all set up perfectly...everything's great, except the spacing sucks and my fingers run out of string up the neck!

_________________
"A little song, a little dance. A little seltzer down your pants." -Chuckles the Clown
Guitars: https://legend.barryeames.com
Music/Pix/Videos: https://getback.barryeames.com

I feel your pain! This has been an issue for me with my Avengers for 22+ years.

I'm on the run right now (running a ginormous sound system at a University football stadium tonight, woo-hoo!), but I'll take some pics of mine. On my old 325 I gave up & put on a Kahler, routing the body a bit. On my two '81s, I just suck it up & make the best of it, but some day they'll get bridges like Corsairs '82, which is string-through-body with saddles similar to the ones he showed pics of (except they're chrome). I think I've even horded some bridges with that in mind, I'll look around.

More later...

je

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...doing bad things to good Vantages since 1985...

1981 AV-320
1981 AV-320
1981 AV-325
1982 AV-320
1982 VS-695-12
1982 VSH-445
1983 AV-330
1995 VST 33 CE TBK