Thurston Moore Jazzmaster - Drop in Mastery Bridge?

[clark]

Hey-
I just picked up a Thurston Moore Jazzmaster. The neck is awesome, the bones are there to make this a really good guitar, but the string height has to be REALLY high for it not to buzz. I have to raise the bridge to stop the buzz. This makes the high/low "e" strings very high. Now the Thurston Moore has a 7.25" Radius and jumbo frets. I am used to an AVRI Jazzmaster that I rewired with jumbo frets and added a Mastery that has really low action and plays perfectly. I am wondering if the bridge is actually for a 9" radius.

has anyone added a Mastery Bridge to the Thurston Moore Model? I see that on Mastery's site you have to buy extra thimbles to make it work. Is this a drop in replacement, or do you need to drill anything? Any one done this?

[NICQ]

Yeah I've done that
The original Gotoh Tune-o-matic bridge on the TMJM is for a 12" radius I think (like all tune-o-matic bridges)
I bought the Mastery thimbles but they were not an airtight fit (almost loose) but they are the best and only option I guess
No need to drill - you have to remove the original thimbles and while there are a few methods I found a youtube vid where you drop a small screw inside and then screw the original posts down - the whole thing just comes out easily

here it is : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ykWHdRypMUM

[Larry Mal]

It certainly won't work without some kind of modification, you've got you a Tune-O-Matic on there and that's a whole different system.

StayTrem used to make some conversion stuff for going TOM to their bridge, which if you appeal to them you might be successful and that's a bridge that works great and is hard set to 7.25".

As far as Mastery, I've never heard that they offered anything to convert TOM to their bridge, of course, you can pull the setup that is in there out and put in the thimbles that work for their bridges I imagine, anything is possible, but it's not a fix that I would do.

Really, if you aren't otherwise unhappy with the bridge, it might just need a trip to the luthier. The saddles on TOM bridges have notches and that's what the strings rests in- duh- but the point is, by deepening some of them you can make it be correct to the radius of the neck.

[Embenny]

Really, if you aren't otherwise unhappy with the bridge, it might just need a trip to the luthier. The saddles on TOM bridges have notches and that's what the strings rests in- duh- but the point is, by deepening some of them you can make it be correct to the radius of the neck.

This. Cheaper than a Mastery and more likely to solve your issues. File for correct radius and probably a truss rod tweak/fret leveling. Buzzing with medium-low action does not sound like the bridge is the culprit. 99% sure it'll be a setup-related issue. Can't tell you how many times I've traced these things to 1-2 "problem" frets that went away with a good leveling.

[andy_tchp]

^ + eleventy.

Replacing the bridge will make precisely zero difference to uneven frets or a mal-adjusted truss rod.

Will only lighten your wallet by ~$180 which, again, won't fix the fret buzz.

[NICQ]

^^ I agree

The original Gotoh bridge on my TMJM was crap and rattled a lot so I put the cheap one from my Squier JMJM on it which was a lot better

Put the Mastery on it because I wanted to try it out and have a more comfortable feel on my palm (don't like TOMs) and also the high e string tended to break often (now I think I could have paid more attention to the notches)

I sometimes think to switch back to the SquierJM TOM because I can't help but feel it had more sustain and twang before I put the Mastery on (yes I really said that)

[clark]

I had the original TOM/AOM Bridge filed to the correct radius and a few frets needed polishing. This fixed everything and the guitar plays great.