Listen to the sustain… It’s a highly revered quality, the ability to sustain for ages. But what happens if something might impact that sustain, and how useful a characteristic is sustain anyway?
Check it out…
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Getting the top of an acoustic instrument moving is vital to getting the best tone from it. You have to make sure you're transferring as much of the strings' energy as possible and a too low a saddle can mess that up and really kill your tone.
Find out more…
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What we generally refer to as the ‘offset’ Fenders (Jazzmaster, Jaguar, Mustang, Jag-Stang) can sometimes be a quirky bunch and one of their more common annoyances is the bridge.
Often, notes can suffer from a lack of focus and sustain. Strings can ‘jump’ from their slots if played even a little too hard, and the bridge itself can be buzzy and rattly. Sometimes you’ll even have saddle height screws vibrating loose and rattling, or even falling out.
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For the last while I’ve been rambling on about string angle over the nut. Now, I’m going right down the other end. Let's talk about how the angle your strings break over your bridge saddles can impact your Gibson (or Gibson-style) guitar.
Specifically, let's talk about collapsed bridges…
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You know the string retainer bar? Also known as the ‘dammit-I-forgot-to-put-the-string-under-it bar’.
It’s that little thing on the headstock, between your nut and tuners. The strings install under it.
You’ll find them most often on guitars with locking tremolo systems like Floyd Rose and Ibanez Edge bridges, and, on these instruments, it's important that it's properly adjusted.
String break angle can cause problems if it's not correct. Too shallow an angle, in particular, can be a source of buzzes, rattles, and general tone-sucking.
Get the skinny on sting angles and avoid sucked tone.
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So, I want to talk about a few tips related to string ‘break angle’ — the angle the string takes over the nut or saddle. However, I reckon that it might be useful to explain what I mean and to give a little background on this area first.
Let's start with the break angle at the nut — that's the angle at which the string leaves the nut and heads for the tuner.
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