RavenCrest wrote: ↑Mon Feb 26, 2024 9:14 pmBecause I'm a bit OCD (ok maybe more than a bit) My Classic Player JM is bothering me.
As a few people have already said, they never should have moved the vibrato plate closer to the bridge. The improvement of break angle doesn't fix the bridge problems when using round wounds completely. What it does instead is compromise the offset tone, in my experience more so than using a Buzz Stop on an offset with the vibrato plate in the regular position closer to the bottom bout strap button. That vibrato plate is integral to the offset core tone no matter what - if you move the plate, you lose it. If you fit a Gibson style stoptail and bridge, you lose it. It survives even when you heavily mod an offset, as I have done. I've tried maybe half a dozen CP JMs and Jags at this point, all stock off the peg in guitar stores, and they don't have the same mojo. I've even owned one of the Jaguar Special HH in black/chrome, and it was one of the dullest guitars I've had - no character of it's own whatsoever.
alexpigment wrote: ↑Mon Mar 25, 2024 7:04 pmI just really wanted to come in and give a huge thank you for this comment. I had tried both 8mm and 10mm length m8 screws in the past - both of those definitely needed springs or they would fall into the body under the inserts. I got another mixed set of grub screws the other day that included a 16mm length, and put those into one of my guitars. The notes vibrate through the whole body and the guitar just has so much more harmonic complexity now. Such an obvious thing that never occurred to me. Thank you again. This made a world of difference.
You're right; it is good advice. Anything that increases the size of the contact points of the bridge to the body will increase sustain and thicken tone on offsets. My quick solution for this years ago which has worked surprisingly well was fit VGA plug mounting screws from an old dead GPU to the bottom of the Mastery bridge as for some reason the thread gauge is a perfect match. This was originally done to stop bridge sinking as even on the Mastery I was paranoid it'd sink during a gig (I've had both stock and Mustang bridges slip on their original grub screws which you usually don't notice until you play a solo and suddenly every time you bend a string even a tone it chokes out, super embarrassing).
See those little spring-loaded screw plugs on either side of the blue port? Those are on my Mastery bridge inside the Jag, sitting on the bridge thimbles, and have been for like 15 years .
I feel perhaps sugarandopium's suggestion is better. Mine means you can't adjust the action without taking out the bridge, not that I ever need to do that (it's pretty low as the neck is shimmed).