Strings Unravel At Bridge. Rough Saddles?

[xaghce]

My Floyd Rose imitation bridge needs some help. I’ve been playing really heavily for the past couple months, and I think I must have eaten some rough spots into the saddles on my bridge because for the past 3 weeks or so, my 5th and 4th strings keep unraveling and snapping at the bridge.

I’m pretty sure that there must be some snags in the saddles, but don’t have a lot of tools and am not sure how to fix this, so I called a local shop to ask them if they could look at it, but they said oh, maybe ur just playing too hard. Idiot. I hung up the phone.

Anyways, does anyone know of any good tutorials on smoothing out the saddles, or do u think I need to replace my bridge or do u have any other advice? (other than “maybe ur playing too hard”)

I’d appreciate it!

[Mitch]

I don't really know anything about floyd roses but if the strings go over a sharp edge behind the saddle they will often break there. A trick to prevent this(which i saw in a guitar maintainace book) is to put 1/2" to 1/4" of that wire insulation tube stuff over the string behind the saddle where it goes over the hard edge. I know this works on a strat trem but like i said, i know nothing about floyd roses so it may not work.

[ihocky2]

Try a little extra fine sandpaper over the area that you think is rough. I would say like 400 grit or higher. You just want to polish off any burrs.

[xaghce]

Mitch:

That’s a pretty smart idea… hadn’t thought of that. But due to the design of my bridge, I’m pretty sure it’s the groove in the saddle that I would have to insulate and not the area behind it… and that kind of worries me that adding anything would throw off the intonation of my guitar or maybe cause a problem w/ resonation? Not sure

Ihocky2:

Haha, sandpaper! Great! It’s so simple I can’t believe I didn’t think of it! I kept thinking about really fine rounded files…

Thanks a lot guys! I’ll try some stuff out this weekend and post how it goes.