Grounding Individual Saddles

[low end fuzz]

like the title said; this build comprised of salvaged projects and scraps

well i was getting an idea of how my bridge was going to sit in comparason to my electronics mount when i "shat the bed"

what i have here is 4 individual saddles; im using them because of the short scale and neck taper from an unsuccesful 5 string build (i tried a regular bridge; way to wide)

how the hell am i gonna ground all these???

first thing i thought was just ground the g string but all the strings dont connect anywhere!

so i have some ideas if you bare with me; my hope is somebody says "thats the hard way,this is easy, all you need to do is....."

my first thought was hooking the g saddle to the common, then making drill holes to each of the saddles by going thru the screw holes to the next and passing a bare wire to wrap around the screws;

exept this alot of drilling with a bit bigger than the hole left by the screw; and thats still if i hit each consecutive screw hole on the first attempt;

basically the easiest way would be to have some kind of connection in visible sight, which would look awful!

but, what if i somehow connected the tunerss to eachother;their giant clover tuners; which would give me a drilling area that could be covered and not weaken screw areas; but; any mess ups would be twice as bad (like drilling thru) cause it would be on the headstock; unless i chiseled a path on the back of the headstock with wires and

put a venneer over the back; but would the gullys show thru?

sorry for ranting; im sorta frstrated

[Jon]

If I'm not mistaken, a single piece of copper beneath all of the bridges and grounding the G will work. This is how I'm about to go about it. Although visually it wont be showing because the saddles are so close together (15.5mm spacing). You can always search for a bridge with the specific string spacing you're looking for, since there are several bridge spacings for bass, not just two. 15mm, 15.5mm, 16mm, etc all the way up to 20mm. Hipshot makes adjustable bridges (side to side) and I believe Kahler does as well, but those bridges are damn near impossible to find.

[j. pierce]

Ground one string bridge, and use a zero fret (or a brass nut) and you're all set.

Are single-string bridges able to through-body mount? That would make things easy as well - use a metal plate on the back instead of individual ferrules.

Are you putting a top, like a maple cap or something, on this instrument? You could inlay a metal block under the bridge area, and cap the body. You don't see this metal piece after that. The piece of metal could be something small you can drill through that all the screws for the bridges make contact with, or it could be a larger block that's tapped, and then the bridges would all be attached with bolts rather than wood screws.

Just spouting off ideas here.

[low end fuzz]

the thing is im using stuff i have laying around; these saddles are top mount so ferreles are out; its fretless, so zero fret is out;

but i was thinking hard last night; i wouldnt "want" to do either of these, but i guess a brass nut( good call J.P.), or a wood nut with a brass rod runnning thru that would continue thru and touch each string,might be tricky;

or a string tree that just touches the strings all at once;

Jon; the copper under the saddles would be the greatest thing ive ever heard; but i cant fatham how it could possibly work?

edit- oh wait; i see, i read it wrong the copper is touching; but ya no good because i still have considerably big spaces;

im gonna try to figure this out, but im gonna put a pic up so you can see my dilema

thank you for helping

oh and its aleady got its top on and the opposite side of the electrics have been hollowed out

[WezV]

personally i would go with drilling small holes between the screw holes for the individual bridges- fiddly but it doesnt require any compromise in tone that having a brass nut would- unless you wanted a brass nut anyway in which case its fine untill someone decided to change the nut. You should be able to get a drill bit smaller than the screwhole and the wire doesnt need to be very thick at all

On the one i am just finsihing with individual bridges i am having them mounted to a wooden plate that will hide coppershielding to each screw hole - but i did that as much for bridge height because i wanted a neck angle and it was incorporated at the early stage of the design. Its probably not something everyone will like anyway

[low end fuzz]

i got it!

basically the same thing thats been on the table ,but easier; instead of trying to tap into my screw w/ground wire;

im gonna drill from the middle of the saddle (under) into my pickup cavity, that will be sheilded and ground them there which inturn will be grounded to the electronic cavity (common ground)

im gonna put a lil piece of copper tape between the wire and the body (saddle/wire/copper) to insulate it;

i dont forsee problems with this and its comparativly easy...........i hope