Options - Bridge Replacements for a 70's Guild JS

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Long story short....

The bass needs a heat neck reset. The bridge is currently a Leo Quan Badass which does not work well at all with this bridge. I've looked for originals and reissues of the Hagstrom harp shaped bridge and they go for huge bills. I'm look for another option for a low profile bridge since it seems high bridges even with the saddles dropped all the way are of no use. Perhaps certain Schaller's or Hipshots? I"m just looking for some suggestions from you Guild pro's! That's why I came here! I'm usually a talkbass regular but I came here since I couldn't get much help over there. I searched....so sorry if my attempt was rendered useless. Thank you so much! 8) :p


Here's the beaten baby!


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Happy Face

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I'll be curious about what the experts have to say.

But one idea may be a D'Armond Starfire bridge. A few years back I bought one figgering I'd swap it onto my JS-II as an experiment. But I gave up the idea when i realized that it wold require drilling new holes in the bass. Sold the bridge. But it looked like it would fit...
 

mellowgerman

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I'd say give the Dearmond bridge a try... only thing that comes to mind is that I think these have slightly wider string spacing than the original harp bridges
 
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thanks! yea i'm guessing any low profile ridge with similar spacing would do. i'm gonna look around! The two hole design is what kind of throws me off i suppose. i think only the harp looking ones are pretty much the only two holerssss i've seen. ayways, thanks for always giving me help Happy! and thanks for the help mellow!
 

gilded

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How high are the strings at the saddles and at the 12th fret??

The neck set issue is a common problem for both Guild and Gibson basses of this type. I have a '73 JS II fretless and had to get the neck reset, too. If I remember correctly, my luthier opted not to do the heat neck reset, because he thought the wood was so torqued at the join that it wouldn't stay reset for long.
 
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i don't know the exact height....but it's the highest that I have played on any bass eva! how did the neck reset go?
 

gilded

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whoatherechunk said:
i don't know the exact height....but it's the highest that I have played on any bass eva! how did the neck reset go?

Went fine. The Luthier and I talked about it a little bit, then he set the neck where there would be a fair amount of break-over angle on the strings, but not too much.

Oh, yeah, one more detail... Back when the world was young (early-mid 70's), I had a different Guild JS II fretless. At one point, I cut off most of the bridge and placed an ebony slab-bridge on the body (the idea was to get more sustain. It actually worked!). 35 years later I still had one of the slabs, so my luthier measured the height of the slab at the intonation points to get an idea where the neck set was on my original bass.
 

mgod

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Forget the bridge, change the pickups.

DS
 
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why change out the pickups? sure i'd love to get darkstars, but thats big $. i still haven't messed with the bridge/neck. been too busy with my other basses....but i'm accomplished this one up and running in the near future!
 

fronobulax

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whoatherechunk said:
why change out the pickups? sure i'd love to get darkstars, but thats big $. i still haven't messed with the bridge/neck. been too busy with my other basses....but i'm accomplished this one up and running in the near future!

Welcome.

I'm no help because my bridges are all original and I've not really considered changing them.

The Guild humbuckers, which your bass has, are not held in high esteem at LTG and reminding people of that is a recurring theme. My experience is that they are "one trick ponies". They have one fat sound that is often indistinct and lacks focus. That is exactly what I want when I am playing out of my comfort zone because it means no one really knows what pitch I played :) But for tone and variety the JS with humbuckers is my least useful bass.

mgod's experience as a professional bassist who "likes Guilds" gives his opinion a whole lot more weight than mine, even if we agree.

That said, if you want that fat tone then you won't get it by swapping pickups.
 
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Did you make any progress?

I'm looking for a bridge for a JS project I just got, I'm thinking I might just have to put a hipshot style a brass bridge on it, with Darkstars.
 

fronobulax

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CloudyKnuckles said:
Did you make any progress?

I'm looking for a bridge for a JS project I just got, I'm thinking I might just have to put a hipshot style a brass bridge on it, with Darkstars.

Welcome. FWIW, I only recall seeing one complete bridge on ebay in the past couple of years and it went for over $200. Tell us about your project...
 
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It has a broken headstock, and a partial refinish, looks like it got dropped while the latter was happening and the owner gave up on it. Looks like a clean break though, I'm gonna glue it up and hope for the best.

http://cgi.ebay.ca/Electric-Bass-Guitar ... 5d2d7d13c6

I found this if anyone needs still needs a bridge, seems to be some sort of fender style replacement for guild/dearmond/hagstrom to fix intonation issues.

I think I'll give it a shot for 35$ hopefully the holes line up, get brass saddles or try and craft some out of rosewood for more authentic sounds. Any suggestions?
 

fronobulax

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I may be wrong but that bridge looks like it was the bridge used on the reissue Starfires in the 1990's. I think you are pretty much stuck with the chrome saddles. The attachment and adjustment are different and I doubt you would be able to replace them with rosewood saddles sized for the vintage bridge. Figure $40-$60 for saddles if you buy them.

Vintage bridge on a '67 Starfire I
200%26_09_05_Guild%20004.jpg


Vintage bridge on a 1971 JS II
200%26_09_05_Guild%20014.jpg


In both cases note that saddles adjust on a trough in the bridge whereas the eBay bridge has them moving along a screw that runs parallel to the strings.
 
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I was thinking more like making my own barrel saddles, or file down tops of the saddles and attach rosewood tops, not so much recreate the original bridge in terms of function or looks but the rosewood saddle tone of it, it seems the pickups and rosewood bridge are the defining parts of the guild sound when compared to the Gibson or other basses of the era.

Maybe I'm over analyzing the effects of the bridge on the tone.
 

fronobulax

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OK. Your skills at woodworking far exceed anything I would have imagined which explains why I jumped to the conclusion that I did.

There has been discussion about the saddle material. I know folks have tried metal saddles. I don't recall anyone experiencing significantly improved tone, subjective as that may be, but there may have been some improvements in sustain with brass saddles. If you are interested use the Search function. PeteyBass makes and sells rosewood replacement saddles and has done experimenting and mgod probably has more playing hours on vintage Starfires than anyone else posting and I know both of them have shared experiences with saddle material.

That said, I don't think anyone with Hagstroms or Dark Stars has ever been dissatisfied with the sound enough to search out alternative saddles so my guess is that, once you have the right PUs, a bridge saddle project will be less appealing. Anyway, keep us informed.
 
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I might be overshooting my skills abit, I have a good imagination, but I agree, I'll see how I feel about it once I get it up and running with the pickups, there's a good chance I won't care anymore.

I'll definitely post some pictures and stuff once I get underway, probably could have waited and got a original example but I didn't want to see this guy get trashed or further abused.

Thanks for your input!
 
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