While I agree in principle with
Bohop Rebebop, that much cutting & drilling with even soft stainless is a lot of work & can be rough on your tools--not to mention your hands & your patience.
I'm proposing adding a piece of metal narrower than the string "posts" that would stop short of the center screw hole & string slots. The major work there would be roughing up the bonding sides of the metal, then clamping them together. However, if a screw or a stack of washers works & poses no threat of structural damage, I'd declare victory & play.
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As for the "Dano tone", I get the "lipstick tube" sound from an Ibanez Talman (TC830BT, the "holy grail" of the 3 lipstick tube Talmans). While it has a maple-capped alder body, the big universal 1-hole "swimming pool" pickup rout combined with the control cavity route gives it a Dano vibe on a pretty stable platform.
The problem: FedEx beat it to death. The guy I bought it from paid FedEx (one of those "contract stores") to pack it & walked out the door. And what did they do, you ask? They took the guitar out of the gig bag, wrapped it in one ply of bubble wrap, stuck it back in the gig bag, & shipped it that way across the continental United States. NO BOX, therefore NO EXTRA PADDING.
The good news: I bought it at less than half of collector book, & since the damage isn't visible from the front when I'm playing, I showed their inspector the guitar, we agreed at a price it would be worth in its current condition, & he cut me a check for the difference between that & what I paid. It still makes me a little nauseous that close to $500 of it's value went up in smoke (or perhaps I should say "down in dents"),
but it's still a good player.
The only thing about it I don't like is how small the body is--when I play it, I look like David Hidalgo playing a tricked-out dinky Jazzmaster that's about the size of a Duo Sonic
(I'm 6' 2" & two hundred & plenty pounds--but losing).