REPAIR RECOMMENDATION for my Bay Area 4001v63

[jps]

...Sooner or later we need to extend our abilities a bit and take a chance at learning something...

What is ironic here is that Chris is a teacher!

[Colonel Sanders]

Chris, you must have unscrewed the mute screw too far! It is easy to put back in to the mute plate but unless someone here has a cool trick you need to take the tailpiece off the body. This is real easy to do, so I would not go pay a repair person to do this, all it is is a few screws (and strings) that have to be removed to get to the mute assembly.

Take the strings off the tuning keys (they can stay on the tailpiece, just push them to one side making sure not to scratch the body or hardware; the strings will slide out from under the horseshoes through the gap between the two shoes. The bridge itself (the piece with the saddles on it) will just pull out, it is basically free floating in the tailpiece; note which direction it sits in the tailpiece so you can put it back in place the same way.

Remove the 5 screws holding the tailpiece to the body and carefully pull the tailpiece off the body (place a towel on the body to protect the finish) but do not go too far with it ( 2 or 3 inches) as there is a wire soldered to the underside of the mute assembly that grounds the tailpiece to the wiring harness in the control cavity. You will most likely find a spring loose somewhere in the routing as the two screws that adjust the mute are spring loaded to keep tension on the mute plate to prevent rattling. Slide the spring back onto the screw and then fit the screw into the threaded hole on the end of the mute plate and screw it back into place.
Finally, put the tailpiece back into place being careful to guide the ground wire back into it's hole while doing so, then put the 5 mounting screws back in. I don't recall whether I put washers in the cavity where the saddle area of the tailpiece goes, this helps with minimizing excess force on the tailpiece in that area. Do not crank down on the 5 mounting screws, just snug them up a bit, then put the bridge with the saddles back on the tailpiece in the same orientation that it was in originally and put the strings back on the tuners.

Max: Hey, piece of pie.
Curnow: Cake, piece of cake.
Max: Easy as cake, yes?
Curnow: Pie, easy as pie.

It probably took you more time to type this post than to do the actual job...

[jps]

Probably!