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Howdy,
Has anyone had experience using the Guitar Fetish solid brass bridge and tailpiece? These are advertised as producing good sustain.
I just finished a build using one. A nice feature is that the bridge and tail pieces have screws to lock them down on the bushings.
My percieved problem is a somewhat lack of sustain or dampening on the thinner strings. Looking at the side view of the saddles, rather than having a flat side and angled side up to the string groove, both sides are angled towards the groove forming a triangle. I'm wondering if the grooves require filing or something. I'm assuming the bridge is causing the lack of sustain rather than the nut, but I could be wrong.
Thanks, Dan

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If you're talking about a tuneomatic and stopbar, ala Gibson style( and I think you are), it's standard practice to slot the string groove, frequently done in order to adjust string radius at the saddles. But I've had a few without, and it didn't make a lot of difference.
One thing to check on those is that the stopbar tailpiece is not so low to the body that the strings are hitting the back of the bridge. Depending on angle over the saddles, on some guitars you can crank the tailpiece all the way down on the guitar's top, others need to be up off of it a bit, or at least have the strings wrapped around so that they come off of the top of the tailpiece, in order to clear the back of the bridge..

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Thanks Mike, the strings are not hitting the bridge body, but the angle from the saddles to the tailpiece is very sharp. The strings are against the holes in the tail. I'll try raising the tailpiece.

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If the strings are not hitting the back of the bridge, that's not the problem. It's either going to come down to the nut, the bridge or something in the path of the strings(pickup too high, pickup cover, etc).
A few questions.
Is this lack of sustain/slight damping of the high strings happening when the guitar is plugged in, or unplugged? I ask because when the action gets to be pretty low on an electric, the guitar can make sounds that sometimes don't carry themselves over to the amplified tone. And I've experienced a slight damping(for lack of a better term) on the high strings on a couple of unplugged instruments with very low action when unplugged, that disappeared once the instrument was plugged into a good amp.
Plug 'er in. If the problem still exists, look at the nut slots (with magnification)and the break angle over the nut. On Fender type headstocks where the headstock is straight(no tilt back) the purpose of the string trees is to give the strings a decent break angle over the nut. Withut a decent break angle, your high strings are gonna sound wonky.
What did you file the nut slots with? Did you use a proper nut file that will file a round bottomed slot? Also, how deep are the slots for the high strings? A low cut nut slot can do this, too. Press the string down at the third fret. Look at the height of that string off of the 2nd fret. There should be a small gap. If there's not, the nut slot's too deep.
And try raising the action a bit. If that fixes it, you may need a fret level (or re-level), or maybe you're trying for too low of an action for the guitar.
I may have told you some things you already know. I don't mean any offense by that. I don't know your level of experience, so I'm trying to cover all the bases.

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Mike

The only thing nescessary for evil to thrive is for good men to do nothing.

Thanks Mike, No offense taken. I am suspecting the nut since I don't have real nut files. I used sandpaper folded over thickness gauges. I built two guitars previously using plastic nuts with no issues, but this build is with bone. I may invest in several real files. I appreciate the feedback! I wish I would have found this site much earlier.
Dan

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