Bridge Cover Adjustment

[thark]

Hi folks. I'm just about finished setting up my 370/12. Installed Rickysounds wide nut for a great improvement in string width and playability (for me at least). I set the neck relief and the action to my preferences and the instrument now plays and sounds just great!

One thing however is that the bridge cover screws interfere with the bridge height when fully screwed down. I have the bridge set pretty low to get the action I want and this presents a problem. How can I secure the bridge plate without disturbing the bridge height? My first thought is to use some kind of shim to hold the cover up a bit and prevent the screws from contacting the bottom plate. Has anyone run into this before? How did you solve the problem?

Cheers,

Keith

[admin]

Thanks Keith. Can you send along a couple of photos?

[thark]

Here is a photo. Pretty hard to see the cover plate screw under the bridge assembly but if you look carefully you can see that it is contacting the base plate, even without being fully screwed in. Of course this means that the bridge cover flops about when I play the guitar. If I screw it in any further it will lift the bridge.

[teb]

I'd just stick something in there somewhere to eat up the slack- small stainless washers, rubber washers, O-rings, etc. Option #2 is to do like many of us do, which is to stick the bridge cover in the case and leave it there so that you can do palm muting, dampening strings at times when you don't want them to keep ringing. I supposeit might look a bit unfinished to some folks, but it has never bothered me and I think the performance increase is well worth the trade off.

[jdogric12]

Yikes, you're bottomed out! A few options:
Use lighter tension strings
File down the parts of the cover screws that are protruding
Winfield Vintage thin baseplate

[thark]

I'd just stick something in there somewhere to eat up the slack- small stainless washers, rubber washers, O-rings, etc.

That is what I thought I might do. Maybe I'll take a trip to the local hardware store tomorrow and see what I can dig up. I'd rather leave the cover on than remove it since I rest my hand there while playing.

[admin]

Thanks for the photo, Keith. Several suggestions here. I like the one offered by Todd the best. But, cutting of the real estate of the screw you are never going to use would surely work as well.