Siting a Strat bridge accurately

Svartmetall · May 2023

Hi - I'd wondered for ages about putting together a guitar myself, and after Beck died I decided to make one in tribute to him; I settled on a Seafoam Green Strat with a rosewood board and a reverse headstock, a la the CS Strats Beck used in the last few years. The body is a nicely resonant alder one from Northwest, but I've run into an issue - I have no idea how to accurately site the bridge, as there are no pre-drilled holes for it (I'll be going with a traditional 6-screw vibrato bridge in gold, as I reckon gold hardware will look great against the body colour) apart from the big hole for the bridge block.

Can I just measure from the where the holes on another Strat body are relative to the bridge-block hole (i.e. assuming all are routed the same), or is there another way I should do it? I'm figuring I want to get the bridge in before I can make sure the neck is accurately lined up to match string paths with the bridge.

tia

Funkfingers · May 2023

The nut is the datum point. All scale related measurements begin there.

Trusting the edges of a body or any of its routed cavities is asking for trouble.

Svartmetall · May 2023

My worry is, how can I be sure I've got the neck exactly correct with nothing to judge it by? What if I drill the neck holes and then discover that it's a mm or two off at the bridge end (there's just enough play when the neck's in the socket)? Or should I just say sod it, get a good tight join all along the upper edge of the neck socket and then let that dictate where the bridge goes?

ICBM · May 2023

Fit the neck fully into the pocket, tight up against the end wall - that’s the correct position.

Measure from the fingerboard face of the nut to the top of the fret crown on the 12th fret. Double that distance, and mark the body there. That’s where the bridge saddle tops should be if adjusted fully forwards (so they’re just touching the pivot screws on a 6-screw bridge) - no string will intonate shorter than that, even the top E will be very slightly longer.

I would be wary about allowing ‘room for error’ by setting the bridge any further forward than that, since the low E often doesn’t have much more than just enough travel when fully back.

BillDL · May 2023

I tend to use masking tape on the guitar body for marking placement and screw holes, and it can sometimes also prevent lacquer chipping when you drill the pilot holes for the screws. The Northwest Guitars bodies are hard "poly" finish and the masking tape won't be there for very long, so it won't affect the finish. Some Strat bridge baseplates have blind-ended grooves in them that limit the backwards and forwards movement (and side-to-side movement) of the bottom of the saddle screws. With them you usually don't get quite as much range of saddle intonation travel, so you need to be very accurate when measuring for them.

Svartmetall · May 2023

OK, thanks - I haven't yet decided which specific vibrato bridge to get, as there are so many. Wilkinson are usualy a safe bet, right? This'll be for Beck-level vibrato usage, not van Halen...

BillDL · May 2023

Wilkinson trem bridges are usually of a better standard than unbranded ones sold by retailers, however don't immediately dismiss some of the unbranded (or own-branded) ones because they are often made to much the same spec. There are what look to be some good quality trem bridges sitting alongside the Wilkinson ones on the Northwest Guitars website that I'm pretty sure would be hard to differentiate from each other for appearance and quality without a logo to identify them. As long as they are from a retailer of good repute and the images are high enough resolution to get a good close-up look, own-brand/unbranded ones are worthy of consideration.

Svartmetall · May 2023

ICBM said:

Fit the neck fully into the pocket, tight up against the end wall - that’s the correct position.

But the thing is how can I know that it's centred properly, so the strings will track correctly along the neck (i.e. not too close to the edge on either side)? There's a theoretical centreline along the body and the neck has to perfectly in line with this, right? I don't see how I can get it sited correctly for that if I have absolutely no guide as to how to get the neck lined up correctly - there's no centre line mark on the body to line the neck up against, there's no bridge holes I can mount the bridge in to line it up with that - it's too many variables with no definites. I'm autistic and I've now hit the brick wall where I'm stuck and cannot figure a way out of this.

(also this quote feature is broken somehow, it won't let me type outside of the quote box itself, for no apparent reason)

ICBM · May 2023

Fit the neck tightly to the body first. Then, if you use a straight edge laid alongside the neck on both sides, you can project the neck alignment onto the body at the bridge position. Halfway between those marks gives you the centreline for the bridge.

Penn · May 2023

Can we see some photos? I’m just curious to see what they it al looks like

BillDL · May 2023

[EDIT] I went for a fag before hitting "submit" and ICBM posted the much more concise and easier to do and read version of my post.

While doing this kind of job it is usually best to stick some masking tape down to the guitar body around the hole for the tremolo bridge block and draw your positioning lines on the masking tape.

Carefully measure to the centre of the space between the slots in the nut for the D and G strings from both sides of the fretboard edge. They should be the same. Draw a fine line (pencil) marking the centre of the nut. Stick some masking tape between the last two frets on the fretboard at the body end and measure and mark the centre from both edges of the fretboard. If you now use a long rule you can extend this centre line to the masking tape around the bridge hole. That line should be the same distance from each edge of the fretboard and will need to line up with the gap between the saddles for the D and G strings when the bridge is located accurately.

As long as you have a bridge with the correct "spread" (distance between the slots on the outside two saddles) and your neck has been screwed onto the body perfectly aligned, your outside strings should line up consistently and equally spaced from the fretboard edges along the entire length of the neck. Occasionally they will both get closer to the fretboard edges as they travel up the neck to the body on a fender style guitar, but they should never at any point be so close to the edges that the strings can slide off the bevelled end of the frets, and one string should never be closer to the fretboard edge than the other.

You can verify this by tying off a bit of thin string to the high E and low E tuning posts, pass them through the respective nut slots, and use your eyes and a ruler to line them up with the edge of the fretboard, then mark this line on the masking tape you stuck around the hole for the bridge. Position the bridge so that your marked centre line goes right between the gap between the D and G saddles, and ensure that your new lines for the low and high E strings lines up with the slots in the respenctive saddles. Some luthiers and technicians will actually use two guitar strings instead of string to do the alingnment check. You could do this with a Strat bridge because the ball ends of the strings are up into the metal block, but you would need to pull the strings quite tight for this to be accurate.

ICBM mentioned earlier how to measure how far back or forward your bridge needs to be to ensure you have enough backward movement on the saddles for compensation. Make sure you measure the distance from both side of the nut and/or the 12th fret while doing this so that you don't end up with the bridge sitting further back at one side than the other i.e. diagonal.

It can help with locating the bridge if you stick it down with small blobs of Blu-tac or small bits of double-sided tape. Once you have marked your bridge position and then double and triple checked all the measurements, you can use something sharp to mark your outside two screw holes through onto the body to make a pin-prick mark, then remove the masking tape and mark the other four screw holes using the bridge. It really does pay to measure and re-measure before drilling any screw holes in the body.

For locating the centre of a hole the size of those on the leading edge of the bridge for the six strings, this needs to be pretty accurate and it isn't terribly accurate using a fine pen or thin sharp object and your eye. It is very difficult to know for certain if your thin sharp marker is smack bang in the middle of a round or oval hole that is larger in diameter than the marker. Some bridges have oval screw holes (long side across the width of the bridge) to allow some latitude for screws that are slightly mis-spaced widthwise, but not to compensate for screw holes that are zig-zagged off the straight line across the bridge, so you have to be accurate. After marking your outside two screw holes with the bridge on the face of the guitar, you can remove it and draw a line through their centres to help you mark the centre of the other holes when you place the bridge back on the guitar, or else you can use a fine-nibbed pen to draw a circle of the inside diameter of all the holes and then draw a line across the centre of them. There are tools with a very fine point but larger diameter shafts that allow you to accurately locate the centre of a hole. I can't recall what they are called. I have some old screwdrivers with different diameter shafts that I used a lathe to cut almost all the way through and broke them off to leave small short sharp points perfectly centred, and I just choose the appropriate diameter for the hole I need to mark the centre of. This makes it a lot quicker, but I'm sure you will be able to do as good a job by drawing lines and using points where they intersect for the pilot drill holes.

Measure 10 times and drill once.

Svartmetall · May 2023

Woah, thanks for the detailed reply! Come the weekend I'll lay everything out and have a stare; I think half my issues come from having no workshop type area and no real tools to speak of.

BillDL · May 2023

Sorry about the voluminous reply. I just type as I am actually speaking it through in my head and lose track of how long the post is getting until I see it appear on the page after posting

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Siting a Strat bridge accurately

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