Floyd Style Bridges

[daveq]

I have been dealing with a problem concerning fretboard radius / bridge radius lately. There have been several ProjectGuitar members that have helped me get through most of the issues (thank you!).

This issue lead me into wondering how many people use the "Original" Floyd style bridges? For those of you who do use them - what radius do you set them up for? The bridge I bought from Warmoth has a 10" radius to match the fretboard I also bought from them. The first bridge I bought from stewmac turned out to be a 14" radius bridge (the web site said 10" by mistake) and would require shims to really work well with my fret radius.

I noticed that Stewmac sells fretboards that are 10" to 16" compound and the Schaller bridge they sell is a 14" radius bridge. Do people really use these together?

How are all of you dealing with the bridge radius to match the fretboard radius? Do you always match them perfectly, or do you have some differences?

I wish I knew more about this when I started building. I appreciate your opinions and experiences with this topic. Sorry for the number of questions in this topic - I didn't want to post multiple topics for this.

Thanks,

Dave

[Scott Rosenberger]

You can do a few things, I personally match the radius of the fretboard to the bridge with a radius sanding block, you can also but I dont recommend it leave the fretboard as is and chang the radius of the frets only, but that requires alots of really carefull fretwork to be playable. the third option is to shim the bridge saddles to match the radius of the fretboard. This is the easiest route. make yourself some Radius Gauges that match your fretboard radius by drawing a circle twice the size of the radius you are trying to achieve ie 14" Radius + 28" Circle on some heavy posterboard and carefully cut out a 4" wide section of it. with the guitar strung and tuned to pitch, place the radius guage accross all the strings take note of which strings don't touch the radius guage and shim the saddle blocks of those strings accordingly. It's basically the same as setting up a vintage Strat style trem. You can find more info on this in the book Electric Guitar Repair by Dan Erlwine

Good Luck