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I was playing my beloved 'Dove' GB25 yesterday and, I guess I'm getting old (hell, I am old!) ...

These days I find that I'm still suffering a little from the stroke I had in Jan. 2012, but more so from the arthritis which is really messing up my finger joints and making it progressively more difficult to play certain chord formations. Overall, not too bad, but there are times when I reach for sumthin' and it ain't happenin'. Ya know?

To compensate I have set most of my electric guitars' action quite low which helps minimize the stress. On the acoustics however, it isn't so easy to drop the string height. I was struggling with the Dove, whose action is "technically" correct but which I am finding very difficult to depress compared to when I was a young 'un.

The GB25 has one of those steel adjustable bridges, typical of the late 60's early 70's construction.

I've never worried about it before now, but I am revisiting it, with a thought to replace it with a more traditional saddle construction. In the process I might be able to lower it a tad more. (it's already at the end of its adjustment).

I have mixed emotions about doing this. On the one hand I don't really want to mess up the original design after some nearly 40 years (yikes!). But, it's no use keeping it if it's now uncomfortable to play. There is also an argument that the saddle does not make full contact with the bridge in this design, so not all the energy is being transferred to the top. Tone suffers as well.

This topic has popped up incidentally on other posts, but I don't recall seeing a dedicated thread on it.
Has anyone here made the conversion?

I was looking at this on eBay as a possible candidate: http://www.ebay.ca/itm/331333362428?ru= ... 26_rdc%3D1

The dimensions are extremely close and could likely be 'encouraged' to work with little effort.
Thoughts??

I have seen people do a rosewood insert into the bridge, then route out a new hole to place a new fixed bone saddle.

That is how I would want to do it. It is permanent, but I argue that a well-done fixed bone saddle is such a huge improvement (both in terms of tonality and stability) over the adjustable saddle that original specs be damned.

Yeah, that would be my preference too.
But I don't have access to the correct equipment to do the routing with any accuracy. So I'm looking for something a bit less demanding.

With my old Dove I used to have, I tried a bone blank - I got a nice bone piece that fit nice and snug into the bridge and filed it down. The only problem was that I was impatient and did a terrible job of the filing and ended up putting an adjustable bridge saddle back in. I expect you would have better luck than I did!

Now that would be scary!
Besides looking overly "large", I expect that the extra thickness would mess up the intonnation, no?

I filed the top of the bone blank to be a saddle. I made a real hash of it and threw it out after a few months

My method was a lot like that Tusq bridge piece you linked to, except mine was crudely executed.

Ah yes, a bit complicated to produce such a 'step' at the top.
Nerves of steel and a steady hand required...even then...

I guess that's why God invented CNC machines

Well, I finally got off my sorry arse and decided to try and do something about this thing.
As most of you are aware, the knock against this design is that it is a "tone and volume sucker". That's caused when the saddle is raised and the metal "conveyor" which holds the actual saddle lifts away from the sound board. The only points of vibration transmission left then are the two screws which are still (barely) in contact with the guitar.

In my case, the assembly was already as low as possible so at least the metal was in contact with the sound board. Still, the tone of metal on spruce was not good, neither was there a lot of projection.

I looked at a lot at of possible solutions, the best one being to fill in the wide slot with rosewood and re-cut it for a bone saddle. Unfortunately I don't possess the equipment (or experience) to tackle that sort of precision work And frankly, although this is a nice guitar, it ain't no Martin, ya know? So I'm not paying big bucks to have it done.

But, I did locate a replacement Tusq saddle designed for a Gibson with a similar adjustable saddle (yup they did this design too, along with a plastic bridge ) So I thought I'd take a chance and see if it could be used.

Here's what the old assembly looks like:


It came out easily, and the sound board surface is clean and sealed. I debated whether to take it down to bare wood but decided it was best to leave the finish on. I was surprised to see that there was no nut assembly under the bridge to fasten the metal to the wood. Many of these designs do have more stuff to remove and they can get a bit complicated to remove. Fortunately not so here. The bolts only screw into the metal bridge and project through the guitar top, hence the two holes.



A quick comparison of the old and new:


It isn't a drop-in replacement. It's quite a bit wider, and a tad longer (remember it's for a Gibson):




But it looked very promising, so, out came the ole' sandpaper! The height was fine and didn't require any reduction, in fact it turned out to be a little under height. (adjusted later). In essence I had to sand the excess 'shoulder' width back to the width of the actual saddle. Then it slid into the slot nicely.

But there were a few issues:




At first glance all is well. But look again and you'll notice that the notches for the bolts are not positioned quite right. No biggie though, since I didn't plan to continue use this as an adjustable saddle. However, a bigger problem is the position of the saddle itself relative to the strings. The bass E is barely on the saddle while the treble E has bags of room! Not good.



The other problem is that the the treble side is too low. So low in fact that there is no break angle at all to the pin on the E string. It's straight through! The result of that was a wonderfully low action on the bass side, but a thin projection on the treble strings.

So, two corrections needed (apologies for crappy pix):
1) I removed the end notches completely which allowed me room to reposition the saddle properly under the strings.



2) Then I added a light shim underneath to raise everything enough to increase the break angle and restore energy to the top.



The result? Well, at this stage it won't win any design awards, but let me tell ya, the guitar sounds amazing! Now I can hear the instrument the way it's supposed to be heard. Honestly, the whole guitar is alive and vibrates with a sustain that it has never enjoyed in the almost 40 years that I've had it. I wish I had done it long ago.

What's left to do is purely cosmetic work. I will likely remove any remaining material covering the holes and either reinsert the old bolts (with a touch of white glue to hold them NOT crazy stuff) or, if I get ambitious, I'll plug the holes with a suitable piece of doweling or MOP plug.

At this point I am very happy with the sonic results. What a difference! Highly recommended mod.

I'd say that turned out rather well!

Just a quick addendum:
No, I haven't yet done anything further. Too busy playing!
I just had to rave once more about how much difference this has made to the sound. I can't stop playing the thing!

The increase in volume and tone range is astounding, and I am falling in love with this ole' geetar all over again.
Can't recommend it enough.