Bridges

I spent a little time figuring out which Callaham bridge I'd need to get. The cobocaster has a "vintage" bridge with 6 screws, and that's fine with me. However ... there are various sizes, which seem to depend largely on the spacing between various screws and the "string spacing" - the spacing between the high and low E strings, when measured from center to center. Luckily, I already have a nice digital caliper which I bought from the fine people at MAX Tool, a cool online store that sells tools (though one would never guess this from its odd name).

I like measuring things. Now I know that my right index finger is 0.608 inches wide at the first knuckle.   It reminds me of this article in yesterday's Times magazine, entitled The Data-Driven Life. The article seems to be about how people these days are able (and willing) to measure and record their lives using gadgets like the fitbit. I say "seems" because I can't be bothered reading it.  I assume it says that lots of people are doing this, and they have a false sense of something or other, and so on.  Articles in the Times magazine used to be really long and good.  Now they are really short and not as good.

But I do like measuring things.  I plan to weigh each component on a postal scale prior to installing it so I can know exactly what the contribution is to the total weight of the guitar.  Why?  Perhaps I'd know if I were to read that recent article in the Times. Oh well.

I was thinking of taking the guitar to Evan Gluck,  a wonderful guitar tech in New York City, so that he could get it to be as good as it can be, thereby establishing a baseline.  However, the setup costs around the same as I paid for the guitar, and more importantly seems to go against the spirit of the project.  If  I'm about to swap out the bridge, why pay to have it adjusted, intonated, etc? So I'm not doing that.

Back to bridges ... I mentioned "string spacing" above - time to measure it.  First I want to note that my use of quotes is not intended to be ironic.  I have nothing but respect for the concept of string spacing, and acknowledge its validity as a measurement.  To measure it, I used my caliper to get the distance from the outside of the low E to the outside of the high E, which is 2.106.  Doing it this way means that I am getting extra distance equal to one radius of the low E, and one of the high E.  These radii are 0.046/2 and 0.01/2 inches, so the total extra in my measurement is 0.023 + 0.005 = 0.028 inches. So, the string spacing is

2.106 - 0.028 = 2.078

which probably means the real answer is  2 1/16 = 2.0625.   The other parameter is "mounting spacing", another measurement deserving of respect, and defined as the distance from the center of screw #1 to the center of screw #6.  From visual inspection, this is the same as string spacing for this guitar.

And the winner is - the Callaham Limited Production Narrow Strat Bridge Assembly.  

That's troubling. I think it means that I would be stuck with this somewhat odd size bridge, making it hard to just buy a body off ebay   - any decent pre-drilled body will either be "vintage" or "modern" (2 screw), and not have these specs.

A helpful guy on squier-talk.com pointed out to me that I could just buy a replacement bridge from guitarfetish for $35.  Maybe I should do that, and plan to replace the bridge when I replace the body.  What I don't understand yet is whether having a different spacing has an impact on the nut, that is if I were using a neck with a narrow bridge, would that same neck work ok with a regular 2 7/32 inch bridge?  In case you thought this blog wasn't going to get exciting, I think we've now refuted that definitively.  I'm going to end on this note ... stay tuned!