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Drilling Holes For A Tune-o-matic


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I recently bought a trashed cheap guitar in bad repair. I figured it was a good idea to learn by restoring/modding a guitar that already fit together.

The basics are:

solid plywood body only 1 1/16 inch thick,

24 5/8 scale w zero fret, the neck needs refretting but is straight when not under tension,

two floating single pups (bridge & neck)

vibrato(tremolo) tailpiece with a rout (a write off)

It came unstrung and the bridge was missing. The vibrato(tremolo) tailpiece was a twisted piece of metal. The last owner had stripped all the screw heads trying to remove the tailpiece (an assumtion) and then had drilled out the screws leaving the shafts in the body. Nasty. Then they had taped it back on!?

The bridge looks to have been a TOM knockoff. There are two threaded posts but rather than going into the body they are attatched to a bar that is held to the body with two screws. The trem had a rout that I am planing to fill after I have stripped the finish.

The questions. My priority is to get this thing strung and check out the pups and neck, so I need to sort out a bridge. How deep do TOM anchors/posts go into the body? If the body is not too thin for a proper TOM mount, that gives me the options of TOM and string through, TOM and tailpiece, and LP Jnr. Is this correct?

Thanks guys, and please go easy on a Newb.

PS I did try to find this info on Stew Mac and using this site search engine... no dice :D

Edited by octafish
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Aha, you didn't dig deep enuf! :D Go back to the StewMac page featuring TOM bridges. Click on any one of them and then look for the "specs" tab. There you will find detailed drawings that include dimensions of what you are after.

If the guitar was originally equipped with a TOM bridge then you should be able to use any one of them. Most require a guitar that has a neck angle (usually 2 to 3 deg.) because they sit so high off the guitar body. If you want to learn more about TOM's and neck angles there IS tons of already talked about info in the archives.

Edited by Southpa
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