Without plugging it in you can hear a monstrous difference, and they don’t bend. Callaham also came out with their solid billet steel tailpiece and mounting studs and you do all these things and it really makes a difference. The tone of the Callaham bridge is a little clearer and brighter and resonates more. I got him to turn around two of the bridge saddles because I couldn’t get the old ones flat enough or sharp enough. I don’t want to sound like an ad for Callaham, but it’s a revelation. I have a jig that I use to straighten them out, but you know, it’s just pot metal- it’s just crap. There are a couple of other things I wanted to talk about… Virtually every tune-o-matic bridge that comes in here is bent.

I charge $120 and if I’m doing a complete setup I’ll have it until everything settles down. So I came up with this, and the guitars sound better than ever. I started doing this and I found that even great sounding guitars will atrophy if you don’t play them. Dave Matthews wanted to rent six of my guitars. Even great old guitars can be helped by this. After that the tone just falls out of it. TQR: How long do you have the guitar vibrating? You do all these things and it really transforms a Martin. And the straight neck makes a difference. You know about the ToneRite? It really doesn’t do much. You don’t want to do anything in front of the bridge, because it kind of cuts the balls off the guitar. I have a machine that vibrates it, and I only do it in specific spots. Listen to the high E string first and then replace the plastic with the water buffalo horn and listen to the difference. Plastic that they come equipped with of course absorbs all of the sound. Water buffalo horn on the top three strings, and ebony for the bottom three strings.

TQR: Remind me again what your formula is for the bridge pins… That way the low E doesn’t keep the bridge pin from going all the way down. I put the hybrid bridge pins in, of which I’ve sold hundreds and hundreds of sets all over the world, and I use a Dremel tool on the low strings to hog off the groove a little bit above the ring right below the top of the bridge pin. So I straighten the neck, which leaves the high E almost laying on the frets, so I put a nice bone saddle in it that’s taller and compensated correctly. It’s a compensated bridge saddle done incorrectly. It should be coming from the rear, the low E is coming from the rear as it should be, and the G is coming from where it should be. Yeah, I get a lot of pretty new Martins and they come with that cast bridge saddle, and the high E is coming from the middle of the saddle and it’s flat, and the A is coming from the front of the saddle so it’s sharp.

Conn strobe tuner repair