News And Updates

#13 is the second build that includes a piezo loaded bridge. #9 was the first, but the time from completion to delivery was so short that I had little time to play around with them. This time, I have tried them through a couple of different amps and am very impressed. Here are a few pictures of the work that goes into installing them – it is fairly manual labor since having custom saddles manufactured becomes reasonably priced only when the quantity is very high.

I start with GraphTech piezo equipped saddles for Wilkinson tremolos and saw off just the front portion.

I then put them up in the milling machine and mill them down to the correct thickness.

The next step is to shape them roughly. I usually do this on a Dremel with a disc grinder.

I make sure the fit into the custom bridge/tuner housings. These have been modified from the original by having a slot where the saddle would normally sit, and a hole for the wire to go through.

Next, after some final finishing work, is installing them into the guitar. I now rout a gradually deeper channel under the bridges themselves.

Each cable is hidden under the next bridge, ensuring there is some slack for intonation and string height adjustment.

The final assembly also includes a string grounding cable that the 1st string needs to be threaded through. The other strings are grounded through the zero fret.

This assembly can be used with for example the GraphTech Acousti-Phonic pre-amp, but also with the Hexpander pre-amp.

It is long overdue, but here are a couple of initial tests of mounting piezo transducers in the EGS bridges. I mentioned this already in the beginning of the year after having received samples from GraphTech.

All in all, adapting the tuners to using piezos was very simple. And, for use with the tremolo where individual string height adjustment, the case is closed here. However, when mounting the bridges individually with the fixed version of the bridge, it is necessary to be able to adjust the height of each string. Most likely, I will have to solve this using one or two set screws accessible at an angle from the front of the tuner to adjust height. This means having to release tension from the string in order to adjust height (since it uses the same screw for fastening and adjusting intonation). Some work remains. Also, it remains to find a routing of the cables. This is easier with the upper version (IceTone) that has the cable coming out towards the rear. The regular ghost saddle on the bottom has the cable coming out through the bottom and requires some clearance to be created for it.

Here are some more pictures. Please let me know which is preferrable or if you have ideas on height adjustment.

I have been a little distracted with work lately, and while visiting my Dad, who is an electronics genius at Telinga Microphones, I let him help me out with building a sustainer circuit following the longest ever thread on Project Guitar. It counts 254 pages of posts at the time of writing. 

I have got the circuit working and a bagful of pickup carcasses, so will get back to it once I have my guitar done…