Installing Graph Tech saddles on a Tune-O-Matic bridge

Removing and replacing the saddles on a Tune-O-Matic (TOM) bridge can be a confusing and somewhat fiddly process, but really isn’t that difficult. Note, though, that there have been several variations of the TOM bridge, and the process differs slightly from model to model. Also important to note is that each different bridge requires a different set of Graph Tech saddles, so make sure you buy the right ones.

Go here to check which model you need: http://www.graphtech.com/products.html?SubCategoryID=34

Here’s the patient. It’s a 1993 Gibson Les Paul Studio.

If you look closely, you can see that the strings have started to make their own slots where they shouldn’t, though that's not the only reason for this upgrade. The bridge in question is a Nashville pre-2000 bridge, which means the required Graph Tech saddles are part number PS-8500-00.

Once the strings are removed, the bridge lifts off very easily. In fact, be careful it doesn’t fall off when you aren’t paying attention (same goes for the tailpiece, which slides off back the way). Here’s the bridge, with the old saddles still in place.

It is important to understand that TOM saddles (or rather, their screws) are held in place with some sort of retainer, be it a spring, wire, clip, or whatever. Luckily, this particular model allows the saddles (and their retainers) to be removed very easily.

First, unscrew the screw holding the saddle in place. As the saddle hits the front of the bridge, you will feel some resistance, but if you (carefully) continue to unscrew, the screw will force its way past the retainer and start to exit the back of the bridge.

Looking under the bridge now, you will most likely still see the retainer sitting in place. If you don’t see it, then it’s time to look around as it probably fell on the floor or workbench.

The retainer can easily be lifted out with a screwdriver or similar.

Repeat this process for all six saddles.

It’s a good time to give the bridge a good clean at this stage, as it’s unlikely to be as easy to do so anytime soon.

Here’s the set of Graph Tech saddles.

The saddles also come with six retaining clips (small E Type circlips). Make sure you don’t miss these as they are hidden behind the sponge in the packaging.

The saddles are placed in the bridge as follows, and the screws screwed in without the clips. Note that three of the saddles have wide slots (for the wound strings) and three have narrow slots (for the unwound strings). Make sure you put these in the right positions.

Now for the fiddly bit, the clips have to be pushed onto the small grooves in the screws. The location of the grooves is pointed out below.

A fairly simple way to do this is to place them more or less in place with pliers and then push down quite hard with a blunt instrument – in my case, a blunt punch. You will feel a definite click into place when they move to the correct position. Again repeat this process for all six clips.

Here's the bridge with all six saddles and clips in place. The position of the saddles is a bit of a guess at this moment.

The bridge is now put back on the guitar and intonated accordingly (that lesson’s for another day).

Gibson Deluxe Tuners - A Revisit

Please note that this post is part four of four posts. I highly recommend reading all four posts in order before acting on any of the information.

The other parts are located here:

Part 1: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/01/gibson-deluxe-tuners-and-why-they-suck.html
Part 2: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/01/gibson-deluxe-tuners-part-two.html
Part 3: http://diystrat.blogspot.com/2009/02/gibson-deluxe-tuners-fix.html


Given the amount of visits I’ve received due to the Gibson Deluxe Tuners (and why they suck) posts I made a while back, and what I’ve learnt since then, I decided to revisit the topic.

At that time, I decided the best way for me to fix the tuner was to solder it closed. This worked great and still holds fine. However, I was a little disappointed that I only found out about the “official” fix after I had already repaired mine. In this post, I’m going to actually try this fix with another tuner (which I found in a parts drawer in a local guitar shop). I’ll get onto this later.

Another thing I’d like to discuss is peg head hole sizes for Gibson Deluxe Tuners, and how you can use conversion bushings to fit normal Kluson-style tuners as replacements.

You see, Gibson Deluxe tuners are somewhat of a hybrid tuner. From the back, they look like traditional Kluson-style stamped tuners, but from the front, they look like modern Grover/Schaller/Gotoh-style die-cast tuners. The footprints (the markings that would be left if you removed the tuners) on the back of your peg head are the same as the ones that would be left by Kluson-style tuners, yet the holes that go right through your peg head are the same size as those used by die-cast tuners (10mm). So what’s the solution if you want to replace your Gibson Deluxe tuners with something OTHER than Gibson Deluxe Tuners, but without marking your guitar in anyway, or having ugly footprints left over from the old tuners? Well, it turns out that you can use Kluson-style tuners with what are known as “conversion bushings”. The ones that I have tried out and found to fit perfectly are available from Guitar Fetish (http://store.guitarfetish.com/vitucobu.html).

I also wanted to talk about something else I discovered during this adventure, which is that you can easily convert a bass-side tuner to a treble-side tuner (well, apart from having to remove the back cover and fit it back on). This thought crossed my mind some time ago, but I figured it wouldn’t work, since the worm wheels would be mirror images of each other. However, it turns out they are not, in fact, mirror images at all. Let me show you...

Excuse the use of a bass guitar for this demonstration, but it's a nice clear image. As you can see here, the bass- and treble-side tuners look like mirror images of each other until you look a bit closer. You should see that the worm wheels are not a reflection of each other, but are threaded exactly the same way.

Now here is a Gibson Deluxe bass-side tuner (with the back cover removed).

And here's the same tuner with the worm gear inserted the other way around (voila – you now have a treble-side tuner).

Some of you might be thinking, “No way, that’s going to work, man. You’ll have to turn it the opposite way from the other tuners”, but if you check the tuners on your three-a-side guitar now, you’ll see that they do not turn the way you thought. As mentioned before, they are not exact mirror images of each other.

Anyway, back to the “official” method for fixing the cover back on to these tuners. I’ve heard from several sources now that this is the accepted fix for Gibson Deluxe Tuners.

We place the tuner, closed, on a solid surface, preferably held in place with something. Now we place a punch, small chisel, or screwdriver on one of the tabs, right where the arrow is pointing in the following photo (you can see the mark left by the original chisel, in fact) and give it a solid tap. Finally we do the same for the other tab. [This is called "staking" the tabs (thanks, Deuce2222).]

As mentioned at the beginning of this post, this is the accepted repair for these tuners. I tried it out on this tuner and so far it is holding well. It is also quicker and easier than the solder trick, so it is now my recommended method. If your tuner still keeps falling apart, or part of the tab breaks off, you always have the soldering trick to fall back on.

Finally, I discovered a long time after I repaired my first tuner why it felt wobbly. For some time I was suspicious that maybe there should be TWO washers at the bottom end of the worm gear (I only had one) and I eventually opened a perfectly good tuner to check. This is what I found:

As suspected, two washers (there's actually a third one at the other end of the gear, but that one can't fall off). The plastic washer measures a little over 0.6 mm and the metal one is just over 0.3 mm. I was missing the plastic one. I looked around and found a piece of aluminum/aluminium that was about the right thickness and drilled it out to the right internal diameter:

Then cut it to size:

Filed it:

And ended up with something resembling a washer:

And here it is fitted to the tuner. It's a nice snug fit, but does not impede movement at all.

I ended up making two of them, since the two broken tuners I had had both lost their plastic washers.

Just to add that had I still had the plastic washer on the first tuner I fixed (the one I soldered) I would've been very wary about applying as much heat as I did, so if you DO have the plastic washer, you might want to think twice about using that method.

What to do with an old endpin?

See picture.

Installing an under-saddle pickup on an acoustic guitar

This beautiful guitar needs an under-saddle pickup. This is a kind of 4-step process, as follows:

1. Drill a 12mm (or 12.5mm) hole where the endpin used to be, to install the endpin jack.
2. Drill a hole through the bridge to allow the pickup wire to pass through.
3. Sand down the bottom of the old saddle, taking off the same amount as the height of the pickup that will now sit under it.
4. Solder the wire from the pickup to the endpin jack.


OK, let the adventure begin!

Firstly, before drilling a hole for the endpin jack, the old endpin needs to be removed. As this is tapered in shape, it should be easy to just yank it out. Get a good firm grip with your fingers and give it a tug. If you’re lucky, it’ll pull right out. In my case it did.

Now you’re left with a hole that is too small for the endpin jack. As you are not drilling a new hole, but rather expanding one that already exists, the traditional method is to use a reamer.

The problem with this method, however, is that a reamer leaves you with a tapered hole (unless you get a specialised one just for this job), so by the time you open the hole out to 12 mm at one end, it is still too small at the other end. To rectify this, you need to use a round file to file out the rest. I’ve done this before and it took a lot of time.

So instead, I decided to try a different approach this time. It just so happens I have a stepping drill bit whose largest diameter is exactly 12 mm. As it is a stepping drill bit, it behaves in a similar way to a reamer, in that it enlarges holes as it goes through, rather than making one huge 12mm hole in one go. This makes it a nice safe way to drill the endpin jack hole without having to worry about splitting or chipping wood. I wasn’t quite sure how this method was going to work out for me, but it worked perfectly. Note that this will only work if the largest diameter of your stepping drill bit is 12mm.

Most under-saddle pickups require you to drill a hole straight down through the bridge (under the saddle), but this particular pickup required the hole to be drilled at 45°. This was quite risky, as it was very difficult to avoid the bracing inside the guitar. If you are ever doing this, have a good feel inside the guitar to try to locate the closest bracing, in the hope that you can somehow avoid it (whatever you do, don’t have your hand in there while you are drilling the hole). Luckily in this case it was possible to avoid the brace by about the width of a human hair (no kidding).

The hole needs to be smoothed out with a small round needle file, so that there are no rough edges. For this particular type of pickup, it is also necessary to round off the 45° angle, so that the pickup/lead doesn't get a kink in it.

The pickup lead now needs to be fed through the hole and the pickup then placed in the saddle slot.

Now you need to sand the same amount off the bottom of the saddle as the height of the pickup. Use a Vernier caliper to measure the thickness of the pickup, then mark this on the bottom of the saddle. Simply rub the saddle against sandpaper taped to a very flat surface (it’s extremely important to get a flat surface on the bottom of the saddle, so do it right) until you have sanded off the correct amount.

The last thing you need to do before stringing up the guitar is to solder the pickup lead to the endpin jack. Make sure that before you do this, you slide any endpin jack covers, nuts, washers, etc., up the lead, as you won’t be able to do this once it’s soldered. You can slide these parts up the cable from inside the guitar, then pass the lead through the endpin jack hole to do the soldering outside the guitar. It’s a good idea to protect the finish on your guitar with rags or something while doing the soldering.

Here's what the endpin jack looks like before soldering:

Once soldered, push the endpin jack into the hole. Feed the washer and nut down the lead and onto the endpin jack (inside the guitar – yes, it’s fiddly). Tighten the endpin jack nut, making sure that it is nice and tight, as it will have a tendency to work loose otherwise. If there is some sort of endpin jack cover, fit this now.

Here's the endpin jack installed:

Now place the saddle in the saddle slot and string up the guitar.

Here's the finished product. She's a beauty, isn't she? Sounds great too.

How to upgrade guitar tuners

A very common guitar upgrade is to swap out crappy, cheapo, open-backed (or “stamped”) tuners and replace them with better, enclosed die-cast tuners. I’d like to show you how to do that, and point out a few potential dangers along the way. The example shown uses an acoustic guitar with 3-a-side tuners, but you could follow the same process for an electric, be it 3-a-side or 6-in-line.

Click on any of the images to see bigger versions.

Here’s the patient.





The guitar itself plays well and sounds pretty good, but the tuners have become almost impossible to turn, so it’s time for a change. Although these may look like enclosed tuners, they are simply open-backed tuners, with nothing more than a back cover, which doesn’t even stop dust from getting in.

Decent enclosed tuners can be had very cheap these days. This particular guitar didn’t really warrant Schaller or Grover tuners, but the replacement no-name tuners it is about to receive are a huge improvement over what was there before. I should mention here that if you have a very expensive or collectible guitar, you should probably try to replace your tuners with exact matches if at all possible.

First thing to do is remove the strings. After that, these tuners are removed very simply by unscrewing the little retaining screws, as shown here.



The bushings (also known as ferrules) also need to be removed from the front. The trick here is to stick something like a screwdriver into the hole and then gently roll it around so that the bushing slowly works its way out.



Time for a little cleaning.



Now we’re ready to start the work required for the upgrade.

Unfortunately, enclosed tuners generally require larger holes than open-backed ones. The holes on this guitar appear to be a little over 7mm, but as you can see below, the new tuners in this case will require a 10mm hole.





I got this handy hole-sizing gauge with my drill bit set.



As you can see below, it also measures the enclosed tuner at 10mm.



This is one of the two tools required for enlarging the holes. It’s called a reamer and it really is the perfect tool for enlarging already-existing holes.



I put the reamer through the same 10mm hole on the gauge and mark it with correction fluid. Alternatively, you could mark with a pen, or tape, or whatever you like.



We ream out the hole until the mark meets the wood, then stop. In fact, I would advise you to go just a little bit farther, but not much. The reasoning here is that if you make the opening of the holes a little bit bigger here, you are less likely to chip the finish during the filing process described later.





We do the same to all 6 holes, then repeat the process from the other side of the peg head.

We now have a situation where the opening of the holes on both sides of the peg head are 10mm, but since the reamer is tapered, the hole is not 10mm the whole way through, so we need to do a bit of filing to correct this. Although this photo shows the file being inserted from the back of the peg head, I advise you to insert it from the front. That way it is less likely you will chip any of the veneer off the front of the peg head. If anything chips off the back, it is a lot easier to hide it under the tuner, although in fact, chips from the back are less likely anyway.



Once all 6 holes have been filed, and you have checked them all to make sure the tuners fit, it’s time to screw the tuners into place. Line up something straight, like a ruler, against three of the tuners and make a mark in the holes for the retaining screws. Then do the same for the other 3 tuners.



You could use a drill to make pilot holes for the retaining screws, but I prefer one of these. It’s much easier to control and less likely to accidentally go right through the peg head (and believe me, you really don’t want to do that). It’s called a pin vice (or vise, depending on where you come from).



Whichever method you use, remember that these are just pilot holes, so should be thinner than the screws themselves. Don’t be tempted to just screw in the screws without the pilot holes. There’s a very slim chance you’ll split some wood, but there’s a very BIG chance some of the screws will actually snap on the way in. Last thing to remember is that you should mark the drill bit beforehand so that you know when it has gone deep enough for the screws, but not so deep that it goes right through the peg head.

I recommend that you screw in the retaining screws, but not too tight, then screw on the bushings from the front of the peg head, using a socket (in my case, 10mm). Finally, tighten up the retaining screws. You may even want to use your ruler again while you’re doing this.

Anyway, here’s the finished result (the new tuners got switched from gold ones to silver ones at the last minute, before you ask). As you can see, the back isn’t pretty, but it’s functional, which is all that was required in this case. A set of machine heads with offset retaining screw holes would’ve hidden the footprint of the previous tuners a bit better, so that’s something you may want to keep in mind if appearances matter to you.