Routing the Pocket

[daveq]

I was about to route the pocket to a depth of 5/8" (all of my books say this is the depth - although none of the books are using a floyd type bridge). My Ibanez has about 3/4" pocket depth. It got me thinking that the pocket depth probably has a lot to so with the bridge selected.

I have a Schaller Floyd Rose bridge that I am planning to use. No instructions came with it. My quesiton is:

How should I determine the pocket depth for this guitar?

Thanks,

Dave

[krazyderek]

well, are u going to rout out a cavity for the whole bridge to sit in? or just for the spring block? i'd say get out ur calipers, measure from the bottom of the bridge to the top of the saddle, then compare this with how high ur planing on making ur neck in a 5/8th's pocket (don't forget to accout for fret height) and adjust the depth accordingly... like if the bidge is.... .250 and the neck is 1.00, then 1.00-5/8 = 3/8= 0.375(neck above guitar body) .... so that's obsiously to high, now try it with a 3/4 pocket.... 1.00 - 3/4 = 1/4 = 0.250(neck above guitar body) so... that's exactly equal to how high the bridges saddles are in this little example. so u'll just move the bridge up with the pivote pins to like 0.260.. and then u should have a good starting point for when u go to setup the guitar once it's all assembled.. unless non of this made sense...

[daveq]

Thank you for replying - I think I'm with you so far. I did some looking around at a local guitar shop and noticed that a lot of the newer guitars (with 24 frets) have a bit of overhang for the upper frets. The fretboard should be 1/4" and then there is usually a tiny amount of maple (or neck wood) below the fretboard overhang. Then there is a small gap (1mm?) between the maple and the top of the body.

Have you seen guitars like this? They appear to have the neck a bit higher off the body than what I am used to. Any idea what the height range is for a Schaller - Floyd (or equivalent)?

I guess I will build an experimental piece to practice mounting the bridge. Thanks again for the information, I really appreciate it.

Dave

[krazyderek]

i feel like such a knob cause i'm not really an expert on much of this stuff, just using ma' good ol' common sense... ok well i measured the hight of my 2 floyds and i got 0.530" for my floyd liscenced one, and 0.500" for the floyd rose low pro... FYI i'm measuring from the bottom of the base plate to the top of the D saddle, like actually IN the groove where the string sits, so again u have to figure out if ur going to do the eddie van halen thing and let the floyd sit on the top of the guitar or do a complete pocket for the whole bridge to allow for trem movement in both directions...

[Jehle]

I've been thinking about this one for a while.

There are basically two set ups that I can envision. A Fender type setup where the fretboard is parallel to the body, and a Gibson type setup where the bridge is taller, and the neck tilts back a little.

I don't know about all the measurements and stuff, but it seems like you have an option to set the bridge high on the body (floating and all without the recess), and tilt the neck back slightly.

You could do it "the old way" which is to route the neck pocket flat (Fender style). And during a test setup with the bridge in place determine if you need to tilt the neck back. Fender used to correct the neck angle with strips of sand paper, but you could route the neck pocket with a tiny angle to get the same effect. The advantage (even with the trial and error approach) is that you would get good contact between the neck and body and more sustain.

I could also be full of it, and you can ignore all of this babble.