Sweat The Small Stuff
Could your gear be a tweak away from perfection? Paying attention to the details can sometimes help you avoid a big pay out,
Not so many years ago, the tone secrets of vintage guitars and amplifiers were closely guarded by a select few. It was an era of mystery, superstition and wonder. Little did we know the internet was coming… It all began with newsgroups and rudimentary chat rooms, and the flow of information soon became a torrent. Schematics of long extinct amps and pedals were unearthed and could be downloaded in mere minutes. The types of tonewoods that great manufacturers once used became common knowledge. Groundbreaking websites, such as GuitarHQ.com, began appearing with paint codes, decent enough photography and breakdowns of features that charted the year by year evolution of most classic guitar models.
This had a profound effect on guitar manufacturing. With better informed customers, the big companies could no longer fob us off with inaccurate features, inauthentic parts and inappropriate finishes. Slowly but surely, then, vintage reissues began to resemble the guitars they were intended to emulate in a meaningful way. And before long, renowned pickup winders were being coaxed out of retirement and company records were dusted off to track down original parts suppliers. Meanwhile, crack teams of razor blade relicers were at the sharp end of the relicing revolution.
But while the big names focused on looks and seductive marketing campaigns, their efforts generally fell short when it came to the pickups. This left a wide-open goal for ambitious pickup manufacturers, who quickly stepped in to make more authentic and often better-sounding replicas than the big brand names and original manufacturers.
With many of the vintage tone equations now solved, the focus has recently been shifting towards hardware. Vintage tonehounds are discovering that the type of steel used for a Stratocaster vibrato block or the composition of a wraptail’s alloy have a noticeable and significant influence on a guitar’s tonal characteristics. All of which brings me around to the crux of this article.
Crossing Bridges
Several weeks back, Chris Buck called me because he was convinced that his early 80s Greco Les Paul replica could be improved. No doubt he had driven himself to distraction watching Johan Segeborn’s extraordinarily thorough hardware tests on YouTube, and he had been eying up an eye-wateringly expensive ABR-1 replica, complete with unevenly rounded ends and authentic file chatter marks. I felt compelled to ask him,“What exactly are you hoping to achieve here?”“Vintage tone Nirvana, of course”, he responded, in a way that made it clear I had asked a daft question.“Fair enough, then”, I said.“Bring the guitar over to my place and we can try out a few bridges so you can hear the differences and find out what you actually like.”
Over the years, I have acquired a selection of different ABR-1 style bridges, and after a cuppa and a catch up we set about testing. The specs of Chris’s Greco are surprisingly close to a genuine 1950s ’Burst and at 9.6lbs, its weight is comfortably within the vintage weight range. The guitar’s original bridge had ‘SG Bridge’ moulded into the underside and, just as Chris had described, the tone was a bit dull and lacklustre. We went straight for the main event, namely the vintage ABR-1 from my 1962 ES-330. This really woke up the guitar with a warm and woody tone, a pleasing frequency balance and plenty of sustain.
An aluminium Faber sounded brighter and demonstrated a livelier and less compressed dynamic response. A Kiss My Strings replica made from vintagecorrect Mazak alloy sounded very close to the vintage ABR-1, but I saved the best until last. When I bought my ES-225, ATB Guitars included an old ABR-1-style bridge to tide me over while I repaired the original trapeze tailpiece. The bridge merely has ‘Japan’ lettering and I had actually been using it on my ES-330 because it sounds slightly better than the original bridge on that guitar. Chris thought so, too, and we had a winner.
Lessons Learned
So, what lessons did we take from this? Well, firstly, I learned that Chris’s playing remains depressingly accomplished even when he’s lumbered with a bridge that he doesn’t like. Secondly, we discovered that the bridge itself exerts a strong influence on tone, even when the guitar is being played through an amplifier. And, thirdly, the obvious front runner at the start of the process was pipped at the bridge post by a far cheaper and less celebrated option.
But there’s a broader lesson to take onboard here. Sometimes the guitar or amplifier that you already have may only require an inexpensive tweak or two to make it sound perfect to your ears. All too often we guitarists tend to give up too early and sell things on before we have heard what they’re truly capable of doing – often at a considerable loss. A cold rolled steel vibrato block, for instance, may unleash all those upper frequency harmonics that were previously inaudible. A handful of lower-value signal capacitors may tighten up an amp’s loose low-end, and some larger value caps may reveal that missing bass. Similarly, an aluminium
“A cold rolled steel vibrato block, for instance, may unleash all those upper frequency harmonics that were previously inaudible”
tune‑o‑matic can go some way towards counteracting dark humbuckers, and a Mazak bridge can sweeten the treble with bright-sounding PAF replicas while imparting a more vintage tonality on the midrange.
Taking an analytical and holistic overview can help us to understand how various component parts interact. This enables us to pinpoint which components are letting our guitar or amp down and target our upgrades accordingly. Nothing beats a new guitar or amp day, but ordering parts and then enjoying big improvements for a relatively small outlay can be similarly satisfying. This applies whether you’re shooting for vintage tone or something more contemporary.
As for Chris, he gratefully accepted my offer to lend him my spare vintage Japanese bridge. And while he was driving home I found him an identical one for sale in California on a well-known auction site. It arrived a couple of weeks later and immediately ended up on his ES-335. So I’m still waiting to get my bridge back, but, hey, I guess Chris has been pretty busy lately…