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Posts: 41
| I have seen a few early 1960's Gibson J50s that have had the metal adjustable saddle removed and then a piece of rosewood fit in the larger original slot with a compensated bone saddle installed. The tone and volume improvement was great, while not devaluing the guitar by replacing the entire bridge.
So I was wondering if this would work on my 1985 model 1614??? Have any of you had any experience with removing the stock electronics & pickup and replacing the plastic saddle/pickup with a piece of walnut cut to fit the original bridge slot and with a narrower compensated slot for a bone saddle???? And then using a soundboard transducer pickup like a K&K or Pickup The World.
If so, any advice? Do's and Don'ts?? Hey are you crazy?
Any thoughts would be appreciated.... |
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Posts: 14127
Location: 6 String Ranch | It can be done and with good results. I wouldn't try it unless you're real good with routers etc. |
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Location: Copenhagen Denmark | Why would you do that..?..do you experience problems with the electronics ..?..or do you just want to experiment...
a word of caution :
A mate of mine had his D 28 converted , with a very expensive fishman pu/amp.set , since then , it did not sound so well ( acoustically ), then , he converted it back to before , but it still does not sound as before those conversions , now he wants to sell it , look , all I`m saying is , Tread Carefully !!
Vic |
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Location: Phoenix AZ | I've seen a few done like that. An easier method is to buy a larger block of bone and shape the entire assembly out of bone to identically match the original unit. It takes a lot of milling and will smell like hell. An even easier method would be to replace the whole bridge with an acoustic only one. |
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Posts: 12761
Location: Boise, Idaho | I can't imagine my 1614 sounding any better. I don't plug it in, so I suppose the preamp could be better. What are you trying to improve. Maybe this would be good to apply the "if it ain't broke don't fix it" rule. |
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Posts: 152
Location: Maple Shade, NJ. | The material used for the saddles is "Delrin"
(the original nuts were made of some sort of polycarbonate, but are now bone.)
Does anyone know why Bone or Tusq is not used for the original equip.? Just curious. |
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Location: Florida Central Gulf Coast | Originally posted by Fuzzyman:
Does anyone know why Bone or Tusq is not used for the original equip.? Just curious. $$ |
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Location: Maple Shade, NJ. | Yeah ,$$, but these are supposed to be "top of line" American made!! |
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Location: Scotland | Fuzzy, The 1614 is hardly top of the line. It's a great guitar but was a fairly basic model at the lower end of the range. Ovation are using bone nuts on the higher end guitars and continue to use Delrin on everything else
BigB, There was significant improvement on the old Gibson models because often the saddle was not in contact with the saddle slot and was floating on the 2 height adjustment bolts. This just ate tone, and is why the mod you describe is very common. That is not the case with the Ovation pickup and a similar mod on your Folklore becomes subject to the law of diminishing returns. There may be a very slight improvement by removing the mass of the pickup and replacing it with a conventional saddle, but whether it's worth the effort, any whether anyone could tell any real difference is debateable. Dave's suggestion is the easiest, replace the pickup with a piece of bone, Micarta, Corian or any good, hard, dense synthetic milled to the same shape and size. That way you can switch back easily. Personally I wouldn't bother. |
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Posts: 41
| Thanks to all for your input, suggestions and comments. They will help me sort out what, if any, changes I make to this guitar.
Thanks again,
B |
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Posts: 70
Location: kansas | I'd check the dimension of the saddle and find the TUSQ saddle that most closely matches and replace it:
http://graphtech.com/downloads/tusq/tusq_catalog.pdf
the same thing would apply for replacing the nut as it's probably plastic, too.. |
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Posts: 153
Location: Huntington Beach, CA | I've had success with a full depth 1/8" bone saddle blank between equal size pieces of walnut, rosewood or ebony. Then shape and compensate the saddle as needed for correct intonation. When finished, the wood parts are flush with the bridge, the saddle is locked in place and protrudes the necessary height and good contact is made from the strings to the bridge/soundboard through the bone saddle.
The fitting process takes some patience and filed/sanded bone may draw a few dogs to your workshop, but the result is good. I don't like plastic but you're kind of stuck with it if you want to use Ovation's pickups.
It's not uncommon to get bone or some high-end synthetic like Tusk in guitars that retail over $500.00. Not sure why Ovation uses plastic for their nuts and saddles. Then again, I also don't like how the saddle units are sloppy in the bridge slot and tilt forward when you string to pitch. Guess its a $$ issue as mentioned before. Good luck. |
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Posts: 65
Location: Phoenix | Does the VXT have a bone nut? Sure feels like it. |
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Replacing saddle/pickup