Ground Control wrote: ↑Tue Aug 04, 2020 4:54 pm
Absolutely perfect thank you so much.
Yes I was told that the Jaguar was a different breed to setup. One thing I was told was to do before doing anything was to shim the bridge legs to take some of the wobble. I found some slime tefflon sleeve that may work.
Thanks again for you information.
By 'shim the bridge legs to take some of the wobble' (with teflon sleeves) I assume you mean putting those
around the bridge posts ? (shimming usually refers to the neck pocket).
Anything that stops the bridge from rocking freely is potentially problematic, although not always so. It's a 'solution' from the time when people threw up their hands when presented with jags/jazzmasters not staying in tune, without understanding the important characteristics of the original design and the elements necessary to make it work (similar to blocking a strat trem because you can't make it work). Fender has actually used that approach recently in the American Professional (the model that ditched a lot of the original jag/JM features), by adding nylon anti-rocking bushings in the thimbles*. Similar to people who have attempted to wrap the bridge posts with tape to block them from rocking in the thimbles (or replaced the bridge with a TOM or Mastery, which don't rock at all). To the extent that impeding full post rocking encourages the bridge to 'bounce' back to where it started after trem use, they can work. OTOH restricting bridge rocking creates the possibility that the strings may slide over the saddles for part of the motion associated with trem use, and 'grip' / move the bridge for the other part, creating the potential for incomplete forward/backward movement, and the strings to return to a length/tension that is not where they started (hence tuning issues). Not the way Leo designed it, with free, full bridge rocking**.
The general recommendation is to try to get the vintage bridge working
without impediment to begin with, as it was designed, and then approach any problems as systematically as possible, using the now well-understood solutions. Many would now class restricting bridge rocking as a 'last ditch' solution.
*Incidentally, Fender's generic/offset-specific setup instructions (they have other instructions that are strat-specific and tele-specific) includes the erroneous direction to lubricate the string-saddle interface, ie opposite to Leo's design principles for the offset bridge. Read into that what you will of Fender's current understanding of Leo's design.
https://support.fender.com/hc/en-us/art ... -properly-
**Leo essentially criticized his own earlier design for the strat trem/bridge in the introduction of the offset trem patent, particularly the presence of friction where you
don't want it (contrasted to the string-saddle interface where you
do, as in the earlier quote), where it can impede free motion of the trem/bridge ...
"In tremolo devices of the floating or balanced variety, in which the string tension is counter-balanced by a spring bias, the amount of friction present is frequently such that the neutral position is not achieved with sufficient accuracy and reliability to insure maintenance of proper intonation.
...
In view of the above and other factors characteristic of conventional tremolo and bridge devices, it is an object of the present invention to provide a musical instrument characterized by the absence of friction, extreme simplicity of string replacement and fine tuning, complete adjustability of the individual bridge elements relative to the strings, and the absence of any sliding or rubbing between the strings and the bridge elements during tremolo movements or at any other time.
...
The above rocking actions occur without engagement or interference between any of the described elements. The only points of friction are at the bottoms of screws 66 and at the knife-edge elements 28. The friction produced at these points is so extremely small that, upon release of the control arm 51, the string plate 24 returns to the exact neutral position producing the perfect pitch to which the instrument was tuned. In fact, the construction may be assumed to be frictionless."
https://patents.google.com/patent/US2972923A/en