Help with saddles please

cjd-player

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A High-School-age friend of mine has a Hoffner violin bass. He said the strings keep sliding off of the saddles. He bought some new saddles for it, but they don't have grooves for the strings. Should he file grooves in them?

Any help from someone who knows about the saddles for these guitars would be much appreciated.
 

billbass1

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I had a Hofner violin bass and a Club bass.
Both of these basses had a floating bridge.
There were very small saddles in both.
Same exact system in both.
There were some very tiny notches in the saddles.
Just barely enough for each string to sit in.
Nowhere as deep as on a Guild wood saddle.

I never had a problem with the strings coming out of the saddles
as long as there is enough tension in the strings.
Even down tuned a whole step is OK.
The bridge should be lined up perfectly before bringing
the strings up to pitch.

These are old school basses.
They should not be slapped or popped.

You might want to try over at the talkbass.com for further help,,,,,,,,
 

jp

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Hi cjd,

I have a 64-65 Hofner Club which is essentially the same bass with a different body. As billbass mentioned, all hardware is the same, including the bridge. Although I have the original bridge, I've replaced it with an new Hofner repro. I also have very shallow notches and have never had any issues with strings sliding off the bridge.

If this doesn't help, he could also try using the original bridge base or even a floating mandolin bridge base and having a luthier carving a custom bridge to mount on it. The Hofner bridge is unique with tiny metal saddles. A skilled luthier could no doubt try to create taller saddles using metal or a TUSQ blank, but I think it would be easier to just carve a new bridge which could then be notched more deeply.
 
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