thewongster Posted May 3, 2006 Report Share Posted May 3, 2006 Does anyone know where I I can purchase a liscenced or a knock off bigsby bridge for any type of tele? I really need a good price Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
unclej Posted May 3, 2006 Report Share Posted May 3, 2006 Does anyone know where I I can purchase a liscenced or a knock off bigsby bridge for any type of tele? I really need a good price i know that allparts down in houston sells them..stewmac may as well but i couldn't tell you whether their price is a "good" one or not. check them out and then do a little checking on ebay and i'll bet you'll come up with what you're looking for. good luck Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickguard Posted May 3, 2006 Report Share Posted May 3, 2006 You mean the vibrato or the bridge or the whole assembly? It's unlikely you'll find a knockoff of the complete Bigsby tele kit, though nothing's impossible. You can find knock off B5s around, although they usually don't sell for that much less than a licensed B50. I've seen people put other types of Bigsbys on teles, but they tend to require routing behind the bridge to get enough string tension. But the B5 (B50) style seems to fit the best. What I did: I milled grooves into the back of the bridge plate so the strings passed from the bigsby's B5 roller bar to the saddles without touching the plate. This worked out great-- in fact, I don't see any real need for the full tele kit. Doing it this way lets you keep that tele bridge plate, which seems to be a factor in that 'tele sound'. And it also means you're only out the price of the Bigsby--you should be able to get a knockoff for around $40 and a B50 for around $60 or so. Personally I'd go for the B50, since you get the 'Bigsby' on there. Part of the whole look. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert_the_damned Posted May 3, 2006 Report Share Posted May 3, 2006 http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-Chrome-vintage-b...5QQcmdZViewItem these are cheep donno if this is what you're after though. Robert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewongster Posted May 3, 2006 Author Report Share Posted May 3, 2006 Wow thx guys. that one on ebay is pretty good. Also how much approximately will it cost to buy a floating trem. like on the jazzmaster. Can someone give me a list of guitar bridges. I know many ones, like the floyd roses, the bigsby, tune o matic and all that... but there must be some im missing. I am trying to make a very unique guitar, so I kind of want to have a unique bridege. Most people I know have floyds, and stock fenders. but hardly anyone I know have bigsbys. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickguard Posted May 3, 2006 Report Share Posted May 3, 2006 but hardly anyone I know have bigsbys. You understand that a Bigsby is not at all like a Floyd Rose or floating tremelo, right? You can't really dive bomb with a Bigsby --they're really only for subtle vibrato effects, nothing extreme. No point in being unique if it doesn't work for you, right? Anyway, here's a tele conversion kit using a B50. It's just a little more than the knockoff RtD posted. The Jazzmaster trem is something else entirely...here's a Matchmaker version, not expensive at all....I'm not sure how wild you can get with this one--I've seen Tom Verlaine use the trem on his Jazzmaster, but he seems to specialize in weird jittery movements. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
stageleft Posted May 4, 2006 Report Share Posted May 4, 2006 Take a look at the allparts, WD and stew mac sites and you'll find a pretty good selection of whats out there. You don't have to buy from them, but at least you'll know what to look for. George Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thewongster Posted May 4, 2006 Author Report Share Posted May 4, 2006 Cool. By the waymickguard. I know what you mean on those bridges. dont worry. Also, thought you would like to know. Im taking your opinion on purchasing the melvyn hiscock book. I am buying it today on amazon.ca. should arrive in 1 to 3 weeks though... Thanks Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Fleetdog Posted May 4, 2006 Report Share Posted May 4, 2006 If you're looking to put a Bigsby on a tele this is the place to go. The gallery on that site has more Bigsbyed out Teles than you can shake a stick at. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Robert_the_damned Posted May 4, 2006 Report Share Posted May 4, 2006 Mickguard: you can do some quite extreme things on a bigsby (got on on a Les Paul) you just end out way out of tune! might be better with a roller saddle bridge (which I'll be fitting when I get round to buying one). They're really good for doing quite warbly trem effects but not particularly practical for much else! Robert Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickguard Posted May 4, 2006 Report Share Posted May 4, 2006 Mickguard: you can do some quite extreme things on a bigsby (got on on a Les Paul) you just end out way out of tune! might be better with a roller saddle bridge (which I'll be fitting when I get round to buying one). They're really good for doing quite warbly trem effects but not particularly practical for much else! Robert Personally, I love the sound of a bigsby...don't have one right now though, because I don't feel like dealing with tuning issues. Although I found that with locking tuners, a graphite nut and either graphite saddles or roller saddles, the tuning problems were quite minimal...you really have to yank on the thing to throw things off. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j. pierce Posted May 4, 2006 Report Share Posted May 4, 2006 I put a bigsby on one of my guitars. My SG had a real rubber neck, and I realized after playing a stiffer-necked guitar, that pushing and pulling on the neck and swinging the guitar around to acheive the same effect as a subtle trem (really rubber neck, I could strum open strings and spin in a circle without holding the guitar neck and get a very noticable drop in pitch) had become a part of my "technique". My stiff-necked guitar lacked this "feature". I figure it probable wasn't good for my guitar to be pulling the neck like that - (it made an awful cracking noise once, and it's detuning "ability" got more and more dramatic as time went on) so I got a bigsby, thinking I only wanted a subtle trem. Well, I'm not very subtle, it turns out, and have been really whaling on the thing. While it's no floyd, I can actually get a pretty dramatic vibrato out of that little bigbsy thing. Tuning doesn't seem to be too much a problem except for my G, (which I always have almost always have had a problem with, and I think may be attributed to the fact I can never get it wound right - always either too many or too few winds) I have dirt cheap kluson-style tuner knockoffs, though. I'm planning on re-drilling and putting a set of locking tuners I have on there, and seeing if that helps. I do have a schaller roller-bridge, I imagine that helps some, as well. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickguard Posted May 4, 2006 Report Share Posted May 4, 2006 My SG had a real rubber neck, and I realized after playing a stiffer-necked guitar, that pushing and pulling on the neck and swinging the guitar around to acheive the same effect as a subtle trem (really rubber neck, I could strum open strings and spin in a circle without holding the guitar neck and get a very noticable drop in pitch) had become a part of my "technique". Yeah, my Melody Maker has the 'trem neck' thing too. Maybe Gibson should have trademarked that and marketed it as a feature? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Firefox2551 Posted May 4, 2006 Report Share Posted May 4, 2006 My guitars do that too, mabye not so much that when I spin around they loose pitch though, I use that for slow song with really melodramatic chords. I Just strum, grab the tip of the headstock and wiggle it a little a little bit goes a long way and it adds a little vibrato to the chord, I don't really do it on my Trem equipped guitars, thats what the trem is for. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j. pierce Posted May 6, 2006 Report Share Posted May 6, 2006 The Jazzmaster trem is something else entirely...here's a Matchmaker version, not expensive at all....I'm not sure how wild you can get with this one--I've seen Tom Verlaine use the trem on his Jazzmaster, but he seems to specialize in weird jittery movements. So I've been toying with the idea of a Jazzmaster trem for a while, and after seeing this, decided to pick it up (now I have to think up a new project to use it on!) Just arrived today (fastest shipping ever.) Looks like a quality piece, but just a warning to anyone thinking of getting one of these, the Matchmaker Jazzmaster trems apparently don't have the trem-lock feature that a normal Jazzmaster trem has. (Not that I've ever actually played a Jazzmaster with one that was actually set up right.) (Check here if you aren't familiar with the jazzmaster trem-lock.) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickguard Posted May 7, 2006 Report Share Posted May 7, 2006 So I've been toying with the idea of a Jazzmaster trem for a while, and after seeing this, decided to pick it up (now I have to think up a new project to use it on!) Just arrived today (fastest shipping ever.) Looks like a So does it come with all the parts otherwise? Their ad isn't all that clear, since they only show the top of the thing. Seems like it would be too difficult to add a lock in... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
j. pierce Posted May 7, 2006 Report Share Posted May 7, 2006 Well, everything is there except screws to attach it to the body. I should have realized the lock wasn't there because it's obviously not in the photo. (It would be a knob in the front of the unit between the two screw holes.) Other than something like that, I think it'd be hard to sell a jazzmaster style trem without everything, since it's all sort of tied to that one plate and it'd pretty much fall apart with any one part missing. I honestly think the only reason I want a Jazzmaster trem is because it's so big and chrome and like a magpie I'm easily distracted by shiny things. I'm interested to see how much travel you can get out of this thing - it seems like a wierd version of a bigsby where all the magic happens underneath that plate. The spring seems about three times as resistant as my bigsby spring, though. I do like that the arm rotates all the way round - the bigsby gets to me because at it's limit of upward travel, it's still well below the strings, making attempts at picking and trem-ing a sort of interesting challenge at times. By the way, does anyone have pictures on how a Mustang trem works? I haven't seen any pictures of the bottom of one - from the top, it appears to work similar to a Jazzmaster trem, but the shape I've seen for the routes almost seems to indicate that the spring mechanism is similar to a Strat? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mickguard Posted May 7, 2006 Report Share Posted May 7, 2006 You can watch Tom Verlaine playing his Jazzmaster Trem here --solos starts about 2:10... And just in case you forgot how awesome the Jazzmaster trem looks, here's a pic of Brendan's GOTM win from March: It's things like this that just make you want to build! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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