Wraparound Bridge

[vpcnk]

i've a gibson hawk which has a wrap around bridge.

first off i'm not very comfortable with the fact that the strings pass over on a piece of metal before they get to the frets. when i do bends etc i feel that the strings are scraping on the metal. also i feel that the tuning and intonation is bad with this bridge.

why did they design the bridge this way at all?

why pass the strings from the inside, wrap it over the bridge?

if the bridge were inverted then instead of wrapping it around, it would simply go straight to the fretboard, would it not?

so are my concerns regarding scraping, intonation valid?

and if i replace the bridge would it need any physical modification on the body of the guitar?

appreciate the feedback.

[themetalhankey]

r u talking about a string thru bridge

?

[Setch]

There's nothing wrong with the bridge, and every Les Paul, Strat, Tele, Les Paul, SG, jaguar, 335, P-bass, RG, and god-knows-how-many-other-designs prpduced in tens of millions has a bridge where 'the strings pass over on a piece of metal before they get to the frets'.

If the strings came directly through the bridge without wrapping around, they would buzz as they exitted the string holes, and you wouldn't be able to palm mute or stiffle strings with your picking hand. The original incarnations of the Les Paul had a bridge like that (straight thru, not wraparound), and it was very quickly replaced with the tune-a-matic, as it *sucked*

The wraparound design works well, and IMO there's no need to ditch having some kind og wrap around design. If you're not happy with the intonation, you can upgrade to an intonatable bridge which will help, but it'll still be a wraparound.

[vpcnk]

> If you're not happy with the intonation, you can upgrade to an intonatable bridge which will help, but it'll > still be a wraparound.

so are you saying that a wraparound can only be replaced with another wraparound?

not tune-a-matics which can replace the wraparound?

appreciate the feedback.

[Setch]

Why would you want to replace it with anything else? The string will still pass over a metal saddle before it gets to the frets.

Tune-a-matics have different post spacing than wraparounds, so you can't do a straight swap.

[Mickguard]

Well, the strings pass over metal on pretty much every guitar bridge. The thing I like about the wraparound is its simplicity --just one solid piece of metal, not a bunch of fussy little parts. It definitely has a tone of its own too.

I don't have any intonation issues with my guitars (although admittedly I'm not all that fussy about that). As long as the bridge posts have been set in properly, it should be possible to get the intonation pretty accurate. The high E should be at the scale length point, the bass side gets angled backwards. That seems to work for me. I do find that I break strings more often with the wraparound--what I do is sheath the string is thin tubing up to just before it contacts the saddle ridge. That helps a lot.

It's always possible though this bridge doesn't work well with the longer scale length on the Hawk--it was designed for the much shorter vintage Gibson scale. Maybe that's why you get that scraping feeling? One way to overcome that is to put notches in the saddle ridges--then they'll act like saddles on any other bridge, holding the strings in place.

I suppose it's also possible that the bridge won't intonate properly at that scale length? Just wondering.

But you can also buy adjustable bridges that will retrofit to the posts on your guitar--the Leo Quan Badass has been around for about 40 years now, and there are other varieties, like the Pigtail, which doesn't stand as tall, or the Wilkinson aluminums (one model lets you adjust the B/G saddle, the other lets you adjust the D/A saddles as well--that ought to be enough). Schaller has bridges that will retrofit AND adjust the string spacing to your liking. So you have lots of choices there.

On a bridge like the Badass, you can buy replacement saddles from Graph Tech (string savers)--they're not metal, they're plastic. They mellow the tone a bit, which you may or may not like.