Rickenbacker Lock Down Bridge Mod

[Uffingdon]

Hi all first time post here on RRF although I’ve been lurking here for a long time.
After reading recent threads regarding the Mastery M5 bridge I thought I’d share a simple mod I carried out on my 350v63, I had a M5 fitted but couldn’t live with a resonance issue between the D&G strings when played open despite trying different strings etc so it was removed and sold.
The coolest thing about the M5 was being able to lock it down, I thought about it for a while and came up with this simple solution.
The cost for the mod was around £10 for a 3/32nd drill bit and a 4-40 tap and it took about 90 mins from start to finish.

A brief description of the procedure:-
1, Measure from the top of the bridge plate to the underside of the bridge (in my case 5mm on both sides)
2, Remove bridge and bridge plate
3, Drill out the threads used to mount the bridge cover (sorry can’t remember the drill size but you don’t need to remove much material)
4, Fit the bridge to the base plate and lower the 4 hex bolts right down enough to mark the bridge plate through the bridge cover mounting holes
5, Drill & tap right through the bridge plate
6, Sit the bridge back on the the base plate and adjust back to where it was in step 1
7, You’ll need 2 extra hex bolts (I had a couple of spares) to then pass through the bridge and screw it down to the bridge plate.
8, The 2 hex bolts are now sticking out the bottom of the bridge plate, obviously this needs to be measured and removed plus a extra 0.5mm so as not to mark the top of the guitar when re-installed
9, Re-install

That’s pretty much it!

Uff

https://imgur.com/TQTOOoF

[doctorwho]

Nice alternative!

One thing that I would suggest as a variation is at Step 5, one would not need to drill the holes all the way through the bridge plate, just deep enough to be able to tap a sufficient number of threads to hold the cap screw