So, I didn't get a whole lot of time to play with my new guitar setup yesterday, so finally had a couple hours to play with it today. Figured my fellow guitar nerds would be interested, especially if anyone else is considering a similar mod. I tried not to make this too long...
First off, my overall impressions of both mods is that my Tele has never sounded or played better. I was afraid that changing any little thing would take the magic out of this guitar, but it has only enhanced it. I had a blast playing it for the last couple of hours.
Bridge:
I'm loving this mastery bridge for both the comfort and the intonation. The bridge was the only part of my tele I didn't like, and I know the bridge of a tele is such a huge part to the overall tone, so I was scared of changing that. I do not care for the tele "brass bridge" sound, so I was careful to get the stainless steel Mastery bridge. My Tele had those vintage steel screw bridges, originally. The issue was that I had to back them off so far to get my intonation somewhat manageable, then they would jab me in the palm.
Verdict: This Mastery bridge is never leaving this guitar. I highly suggest anyone with a tele look into these bridges. They are easy to swap out, and you can always find a buyer if you don't end up liking them. Here is a close-up of the bridge. I bought this one to have the pre-fabricated cutouts for a Bigsby.
Bigsby:
I only had one other guitar with a bigsby; my ES-330. I had also owned a non-bigsby ES-330, and the tone difference between the two was huge. My ES-330 with the Bigsby just had so much more character and punch, and I ended up selling my other one (much to my later dismay when I saw the prices sky-rocket). I also love bigsbys because I'm not a huge whammy bar guy for dive-bombs, but I love to add accents at the end of chord runs and such. Without a Bigsby, I just do the neck-wobble trick, but prefer the sound of Bigsby.
However, I didn't want to just decide to drill holes into my #1 guitar, no matter how ugly or beat-up looking it is. This is why I decided to try the Vibramate, after all the research. I am loving the Bigsby, so far, though there are a couple issues it causes:
1. I'm not even going to spend much time on tuning issues. Anyone who knows anything about guitars knows that tremolo setups will never be as stable as fixed bridges. However, a well made and setup guitar should not experience huge issues. That is the case with this one. Will my strings go a little sharp or flat? Sure. But they all do so together, and can be wiggled back into place. I lubricate the nut and don't have too many sharp break angles. This is just something you have to learn to accept with a tremolo or bigsby. It's definitely more stable than a floating tailpiece on a Strat.
2. When I have the pickup selector toggled to the neck, my fingers keep bumping it when using the bigsby arm. I know there are some people who flip the selector plate so the selector switch is to the back of the guitar, but it hasn't proven to be that big of an issue for me, yet.
3. This isn't an issue with the Bigsby, really, but moreso of the Vibramate plate. The vibramate causes the bigsby to sit off the body by a decent amount. This causes the break angle across the bridge to be much less than if the bigsby were to be installed directly onto the body. For most of the strings, that's not an issue. And from my experience with tremolos, I want as little of a break angle as possible so the strings don't get stuck. However, the high E string probably needs a little be more of an angle because I will sometimes get that "sitar" sound due to the string being a little loose across the bridge. This doesn't happen a lot, just every once in a while.
Here are some pictures of the vibramate and break angle. If you read my earlier post, I mentioned I had to cut off the tabs that are supposed to lock the plate down under the vibramate bridge plate. However, I'm using the Master bridge plate, so I have to make due.
Verdict: I'm loving the bigsby. My goal is to determine if it is something I plan on being a permanent part of my Telecaster or not. If I ultimately decide to make it permanent, I will have my guitar tech go ahead and actually install it. That should fix the break angle issue I am having.
