Gotoh Tune-O-Matic on a Squier Mustang (Kurt Cobain Mod)

[davewire]

Hello everyone, I'm soon happy to have joined the community and I don't understand why I didn't do it before! I am French so excuse me if my English is not always correct.
I decided to open this topic (maybe it already exists in the depths of the forum) in order to find help on a question that has been bothering me for a while because I can't find an answer.
Currently, I am on my second project to make a new Cobain mod (my first was on a duosonic) and I left with the idea of recreating his mythical mustang competition 1969 starting from a squier to avoid putting too much silver. If you are French speaking here is the link of the forum in which I explain the changes and modifications that I intend to make.

https://www.zikinf.com/forums/recreer-f ... 99#p636281

So I went on this model of guitar Classic Vibe '60s Competition Mustang

I had already had this problem with my duosonic so I had given up the idea but I want to install on this guitar a gotoh tune-o-matic in bridge as the guitar technician of Kurt Cobain (Earnie Bailey) did for more stability. I even tried to contact the technician in person to ask him the question but impossible to find even an email. I've searched a lot of forums and no one can give me an answer.
Basically, I'm looking for someone who can tell me, it's this model and this reference that will suit your guitar. When I look on a site like that of stewmac, there are several kinds of tune-o-matic (modern, vintage...) and I don't know which one to go knowing that the radius of my guitar is 9.5 and it seems that you have to be careful about that. I don't know enough about it to fully understand all this and not be mistaken. From what I have been able to understand, some say that the holes have to be redone and drilled again, others say that the screwing must be filed, others to install it upside down, in the end I I get lost and I don't know any more.
I have an acquaintance with a technician in the city where I live who will again help me to change the electronics, the assembly of the microphones and all but if I ask him to put this new bridge, I would like to be on what I propose to him and inform him of the procedure to follow and especially the feasibility. It's probably doable anyway because Kurt Cobain had some on his mustangs. I hope that you will be interested in this message and that you will be able to advise me on the procedure to follow and the right choice of material in relation to the chosen guitar. Thank you so much

[Embenny]

Tuneomatics are never drop-in replacements for Mustang bridges. You have to pull out the Mustang thimbles, plug them, re-drill for TOM posts, and install those. They mount to the body differently, at a different spacing, using different hardware (and there are a few different styles of TOM mounting as well).

A lot of people here will tell you that TOMs will render the vibrato more or less useless (because they will cause massive tuning stability issues), but if you want to do it anyway, you've got to dowel and drill.

[davewire]

Tuneomatics are never drop-in replacements for Mustang bridges. You have to pull out the Mustang thimbles, plug them, re-drill for TOM posts, and install those. They mount to the body differently, at a different spacing, using different hardware (and there are a few different styles of TOM mounting as well).

A lot of people here will tell you that TOMs will render the vibrato more or less useless (because they will cause massive tuning stability issues), but if you want to do it anyway, you've got to dowel and drill.

Thank you for your fast answer. So I was planning to block the vibrato also as his technician did because I never use it anymore. And suddenly would you have a link to a TOM that would fit among all this choice and that would go on my squier? Any tutorials somewhere ?

[Moo-Stang]

You don't have to dowel and re drill. You can use the existing holes but swap out the bushings for a set of these:

https://www.rockinger.com/en/parts/hard ... ges-nickel

Then just install your bridge posts in the thimbles as you would hole sin the body.

They also seem to sell TOM bridges as well

[davewire]

You don't have to dowel and re drill. You can use the existing holes but swap out the bushings for a set of these:

https://www.rockinger.com/en/parts/hard ... ges-nickel

Then just install your bridge posts in the thimbles as you would hole sin the body.

They also seem to sell TOM bridges as well

wow
It means that it could be a solution to my problem, I admit that if I have to avoid drilling that would suit me!! and the TOMs they offer at the bottom like this
On the other hand for this model it is written radius 12 and my guitar has a radius 9.5 will it not work?
I heard about the fender adjustomatic that they have for example put on the jaguar or the mustang reissues of cobain sonic blue, is this an alternative but can we find this model?

[ldp54002]

Seconded on a fill-and-drill not strictly being needed. I've done it that way before and it certainly gives you more flexibility on bridge placement, but my current TOM-loaded Mustang I did it the quick way by just replacing the bridge hardware (bridge itself and thimbles) with a TOM.

For full disclosure, I did need to pull out a drill to do it, but that was only to increase the size of the thimble holes by about 1/32 of an inch, as the TOM I had on hand had mounts that were ever so slightly larger than the holes the Squier thimbles fit in. I also used a step bit to slightly increase the size of the tailpiece plate holes so the TOM mounts would fit flush with the body. Without doing that, the bridge would have sit a bit higher off the body, which likely would have been easy to compensate for with another size shim.

YMMV, of course. In my case, this is a 2020ish CV Mustang with a Warmoth 12" radius neck and Fender AOM 12" bridge.

[JSett]

Just tape up the Mustang bridge legs and lock it that way...there's no irreversible damage to the guitar done then. There's really zero benefit to sticking an inferior bridge in there. Just because teh Kurdtz's tech did it doesn't mean it was a good idea.

[Embenny]

You don't have to dowel and re drill. You can use the existing holes but swap out the bushings for a set of these:

https://www.rockinger.com/en/parts/hard ... ges-nickel

Then just install your bridge posts in the thimbles as you would hole sin the body.

They also seem to sell TOM bridges as well

Interesting, I didn't realize anyone had made specialized hardware for that conversion.

Doesn't make much sense to me, since TOMs create far more problems than they solve on Offsets, but to each their own.

[timtam]

I heard about the fender adjustomatic that they have for example put on the jaguar or the mustang reissues of cobain sonic blue, is this an alternative but can we find this model?

The Fender Cobain jag has a black Gotoh TOM bridge on it (Fender part number 0091718000; Gotoh part number ?*). Whether that is the exact bridge that Cobain's real jag(s) had is unclear.
https://www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/Orig ... A_SISD.pdf

*the bridge on the Cobain jag below has slotted-head top posts. The only Gotoh TOM with those would appear to be the GE103B-T (which has M8 bottom posts and 11.3mm OD body bushings).
https://g-gotoh.com/product/ge103b-t/?lang=en


As previously alluded to, TOMs on offsets are mostly a historical artifact from a time when guitar techs didn't understand how offsets were supposed to work. So they mistakenly attributed their own difficulties in setting up such guitars to a fundamental problem with the bridge. So if you want to be historically accurate to Cobain's guitars then use a TOM. But don't use it because it's a good way to get the the guitar to "work".

The Rockinger 'excenter' bushings have M4 internal threads. So they will only work with TOMs that have M4 bottom posts (a relatively small proportion of all available TOM variants).

[AcrylicSuperman]

I heard about the fender adjustomatic that they have for example put on the jaguar or the mustang reissues of cobain sonic blue, is this an alternative but can we find this model?

The Fender Cobain jag has a black Gotoh TOM bridge on it (Fender part number 0091718000; Gotoh part number ?*). Whether that is the exact bridge that Cobain's real jag(s) had is unclear.
https://www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/Orig ... A_SISD.pdf

The exact bridge on Kurt's Jaguar was a Schaller GTM in black chrome finish. I had to do a lot of research for his Jagstang and to understand the jagstang, I had to dissect the mustangs and his jaguars up to February 1993 and with thar Jaguar, I went all the way back to Martin Jenner, one of his techs, the guy who did the neck and a friend and former studio musician who worked with him. Schaller was a pretty common replacement in the 70s and 80s, especially with Martin being from Europe.

We were also able to slueth that some of his mustangs didn't use gotoh's at all, but rather standard gibson bridges.

So at the end of the day, if you decide to slap a TOM on an offset because Kurt did it, slap whatever TOM you want to on there because that's essentially what he, or rather his techs, did*.

*except for Jaguar #1. That was all Martin Jenner.

[timtam]

I heard about the fender adjustomatic that they have for example put on the jaguar or the mustang reissues of cobain sonic blue, is this an alternative but can we find this model?

The Fender Cobain jag has a black Gotoh TOM bridge on it (Fender part number 0091718000; Gotoh part number ?*). Whether that is the exact bridge that Cobain's real jag(s) had is unclear.
https://www.fmicassets.com/Damroot/Orig ... A_SISD.pdf

The exact bridge on Kurt's Jaguar was a Schaller GTM in black chrome finish. I had to do a lot of research for his Jagstang and to understand the jagstang, I had to dissect the mustangs and his jaguars up to February 1993 and with thar Jaguar, I went all the way back to Martin Jenner, one of his techs, the guy who did the neck and a friend and former studio musician who worked with him. Schaller was a pretty common replacement in the 70s and 80s, especially with Martin being from Europe.

We were also able to slueth that some of his mustangs didn't use gotoh's at all, but rather standard gibson bridges.

So at the end of the day, if you decide to slap a TOM on an offset because Kurt did it, slap whatever TOM you want to on there because that's essentially what he, or rather his techs, did*.

*except for Jaguar #1. That was all Martin Jenner.

Thanks. So that would be this Schaller GTM on his jag ... with M5 lower posts and body bushings with 7.1mm OD. "Compatible with post spacings from 74.0 - 74.5 mm."
https://schaller.info/en/bridges/329/gtm?group[1]=108

[davewire]

Thank you all for your various participations, you are a real gold mine of information.
By reading your answers, I finally begin to doubt the good utility to want to do the same as the technician of Cobain by putting a TOM. I set myself this idea blindly, convinced that it would make the guitar more stable and improve it, but maybe in the end I'm wrong.
Last night I came across this video which only reinforced my doubt lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TToe7zdMX0M

It might actually be enough to just block the tremolo and keep the original bridge intact.

I also have the Cobain reissue jaguar and the bridge is really nice, I thought it was a gotoh by the way but you're right it's a schaller.

Have you heard of bridge mastery for mustang, they seem to have a very good reputation but the price is higher... 210 dollars without shipping, is it used on a squier guitar at this price? https://masterybridge.com/product/m1-kit/

Thank you for all these links that I will consult as well as your sharing of knowledge on the subject. This forum is great!

[ldp54002]

Thank you all for your various participations, you are a real gold mine of information.
By reading your answers, I finally begin to doubt the good utility to want to do the same as the technician of Cobain by putting a TOM. I set myself this idea blindly, convinced that it would make the guitar more stable and improve it, but maybe in the end I'm wrong.

That's a good attitude to have. I am in the same camp that TOMs are not a substitute for a well setup offset. I neglected to mention in my original response is that mine was by necessity--I built a parts Mustang, starting with a 12" radius neck that I already had on-hand and went from there. Finding a 12" Mustang bridge is very difficult, and I didn't like the adjustable radius bridge I originally tried. The TOM/AOM was the best for my particular circumstance.

Have you heard of bridge mastery for mustang, they seem to have a very good reputation but the price is higher... 210 dollars without shipping, is it used on a squier guitar at this price? https://masterybridge.com/product/m1-kit/

Thank you for all these links that I will consult as well as your sharing of knowledge on the subject. This forum is great!

Putting a Mastery on a Squier puts you in very good company--that's a pretty common mod. I've never really gelled with Mastery bridges, but that's my own personal preference; don't let me put you off. A lot of people swear by them, so if your budget allows, give it a shot.

That said, I have never had a problem with the stock Mustang-style bridge on Squier offsets. I would echo Jsett's comment of wrapping the bridge posts first if you want to see what a fixed/non-rocking bridge feels like before going for a Mastery or similar.

[davewire]

Fender answered me this afternoon :

Thank you for your email.

This bridge could work for example: https://www.thomann.de/gb/gotoh_ge103bt_chrome.htm but it would require a big modification to install it and I advise to ask a professional luthier to do it. Fender cannot really recommend making any modifications to our instruments, as we are not responsible for any possible risks if the result is not successful.

Best regards,

Totally agree with you @ldp54002 i will think about it, thx ! I'm also looking to find a used one, you never know...

[AcrylicSuperman]

Thank you all for your various participations, you are a real gold mine of information.
By reading your answers, I finally begin to doubt the good utility to want to do the same as the technician of Cobain by putting a TOM. I set myself this idea blindly, convinced that it would make the guitar more stable and improve it, but maybe in the end I'm wrong.
Last night I came across this video which only reinforced my doubt lol

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TToe7zdMX0M

It might actually be enough to just block the tremolo and keep the original bridge intact.

I also have the Cobain reissue jaguar and the bridge is really nice, I thought it was a gotoh by the way but you're right it's a schaller.

Have you heard of bridge mastery for mustang, they seem to have a very good reputation but the price is higher... 210 dollars without shipping, is it used on a squier guitar at this price? https://masterybridge.com/product/m1-kit/

Thank you for all these links that I will consult as well as your sharing of knowledge on the subject. This forum is great!

If you are dead set on fixing the mustang bridge, you can fix the stock one by putting vintage sized kluson tuner bushings in your bridge thimbles. The bridge will no longer rock and it will save you a ton of money instead of buying a mastery. Keep in mind, you want the vintage sized ones, not the 10mm conversions.