Tremelo tension and bridge plate height

[Alp]

Hello group!

Last week we purchased a second Comanche. I liked the first one so much I recommended one to my brother.
we have gone through the manual (PDF) for setup and I have a question about adjusting the bridge plate height/tremelo tension.

I'd like to get some feedback before I proceed with any adjustments.

Both guitars are imports and came "from the factory" with the gap between the body and bridge plate a little less than 3/32 of an inch. The pdf manual states that it should be adjusted so that a 3/16 inch spacer is held in the gap while all adjustments are made.
I use 46-10 strings. The guitar currently has all 3 springs installed and they are not going to get much looser. I'd likely have to remove 1 to get a 3/16" gap at bridge plate.

1. This is an old manual that also mentions the micro neck adjustment that is no longer applies. Have the recommended bridge height numbers changed since?

2. I assume that when the manual says a 3/16" spacer should be held, that it means it should be held with very minimal pressure. I take this to mean that a 3/16" gap should exist when the spacer is not present.

3. I have 3 springs attached. If I were to remove one spring and adjust the bridge plate height (tighten screws/stretching the 2 remaining springs) to 3/16" as recommended, would there be more or less resistance when using the tremelo. My gut says there would be less, and I am wary of doing so because I think it might make the guitar more prone to going out of "pitch" easier (ie, the tremelo is inherantly unstable and never returns to exactly the same position even if nudged just a little).

4. For someone who does not use tremelo often (or at all) would it be better to leave the guitar as is, with a 3/32" gap and 3 springs or go for the recommended height of 3/16".
Or maybe I should go with even more tension on the springs and go for even less of a gap between bridge plate and body?

5. Adjusting the gap between bridge plate and body will require resetting the intonation??


Thanks

Alp

[yowhatsshakin]

Hey Alp,

Some answers:

1- Nothing has changed as far as tremolo adjustments are concerned. The Micro-tilt allows you to adjust the neck angle but that does not make a lot of difference, if any, for adjusting the bridge plate.

2- The way I always have interpreted that statement is that you should be able to put a 3/16" spacer (like the proverbial standard toothbrush) under the bridge and it should not fall out nor bind. One trick I use is to have my guitar hooked up to my Peterson tuner, have the springs adjusted such that a spacer is still held firmly by the bridge, loosen the springs, and tune the guitar. Every time you push in the spacer and it lifts the bridge, the string will go flat. Repeat until a change is barely noticeable but you still feel that there is contact between bridge and spacer. One note of caution though. I happened to be setting up my Legacy Special recently and noticed that the bridge actually has 'wings' that flare to slightly below the back of the bridge plate. So it makes a difference whether I inserted the spacer on the side or from the back.

3- There would be less resistance. If the spring constant of a single spring is fairly constant over a range of deviations from equilibrium, the resultant spring constant of a set of springs would be the sum. So it would be less for 2 springs.

4- No. This has to do with the construction of your saddle. With the bridge sloping down to the rear of the guitar, a string makes contact with its saddle over a slightly longer distance. And given the shape at the front of the saddle, there is a larger probability of a vibrating string making unwanted contact with the saddle. This will manifest itself as a kind of sitar sound.

5- Partially. But see it like this: setting the bridge plate parallel is part of adjusting the intonation and it might be that you have to cycle through adjusting strings and saddles a couple of times.

Hope this helps,

- Jos

[Alp]

Thanks Jos,

At this stage all advice is welcome.
I am now leaning towards setting a 3/16" space.

Thanks

Alp

[MickDanger]

If I might add a little to this since it is tremolo related. It is my understanding that the entire bridge plate should be parallel to the body, and the gap between the plate and body set at 3/16ths. This basically means to me that I would have to raise the studs on the plate and adjust the springs so that the gap is consistent across the entire bridge plate.

With this in mind, I have a S-500 Tribute. I have on several occasions attempted to make this adjustment, but have had some serious issues with the 3/16th gap. I noticed that the neck sits low in the pocket, and if I set this gap at 3/16ths, my bridge pieces bottom out on the plate leaving an excessive gap between the strings and frets. In other words, the action is way high. I would like to note howerver, that my plate came adjusted at 2/16ths, and at this height the bridge pieces did not bottom out.

In order for me to bring my S-500 in line with the published factory specs, I had to place a shim under the neck to tilt it back far enough to make the action tolerable. Howerver, in doing this the guitar played miserably with very spotty action. So ultimately, a removed the shim and returned the gap to 2/16ths and readjusted the guitar and now the action and playability is most comfortable.

Ok, one more thing. This is my second S-500. (purchased in 2010, and is made in Indonisia) First one I purchased had a twist in the neck but exibited the same low pocket that I have on my current replacement. I could not maintain a 3/16ths gap on either S-500 without seriously impacting the playability. I do get 3 steps when I dive, and 1-1/2 when I pull up on the G string at the 12th fret.

What I want to know is if there are any unpublished changes in specs that might explain the inability to bring this guitar into comliance? If I had this issue with only one S-500 I would have considered it a fluke. But two of them leads me to think there is a reason for this. Neither guitar came with any setup instructions. I used those that came with my Invader, which ironically enough doesn't even have a floater, it has a Kahler.

Any comments would be appriciated.

[darwinohm]

Alp, I just took my S-500 American and measured everthing and the front of the bridgeplate is 1/8 in .125 above the body and the bridgeplate is adjusted level to the body with the springs. This thing plays beautifully. The high E saddle is just a bit above the plate. If I were to raise the plate to 3/16 I would probably have to shim the neck to get the low action that I like. The trem works fine and is stable. It appears that yours plays fine at 1/8 or 2/16. I would be happy with that and not worry about reaching 3/16. My opinion.-- Darwin

[darwinohm]

Alp, this got me thinking some more. I checked two more guitars that are factory adjusted. The trem plate on my F-100 Return is 9/64 the and the high E saddle is just above the plate. If I raised it to 3/16 I would have to shim the neck. Then I checked a newer Legacy that is factory adjusted and the bridge plate height is 10/64 or 5/32. The saddles on this guitar are much higher and could easily be adjusted to 3/16 or more plate clearance. The saddles and bridge plate on all three guitars appear to be identical. Me smells a rat here. If this is true, there has to be a difference in the depth of the neck pockets between the Legacy and the other two. I also noticed in my most current G&L setup manual that the adjustments are covered using the 3 bolt neck with the micro tilt adjustment. This hasn't been used for years. I could solve this question by doing some more measuring but don't have time until later today. Maybe Craig has some insight to this. -- Later--Darwin

[Craig]

I have brought this post to John Toner's (G&L Customer Service) attention.
I will post a followup as soon as I hear from John.

Stay tuned.

[MickDanger]

Well I am somewhat relieved that I'm not the only one that noticed this issue. I thought I was doing something wrong. Would be nice though to see some updated specs and possibly some sort of explanation.

I've had my G&L Invader for over 20 years, and the booklet that came with it has the same specs that are currently in use despite the fact that it was factory built with a Kahler, and my S-500 Tribute came with nothing but a gig bag and some wrenches.

I have to say though, the S-500 sounds stunning.

[panchito]

Hi,
as for the springs, I'd say that if you don't use the trem regularly and want to avoid problems with bendings, you should leave the 3 springs.

[MickDanger]

Yeah, the 3 springs should be left in. I had to seriously tighten the springs to maintain the parallel plane of the bridge plate with only two springs. In effect arriving at the same tension I would have had if I had just left all 3 springs in. Basically all you're doing by removing a spring is making the remaing two make up the difference. I really don't think you can change the feel at all since the idea of a floating bridge is the balance in tension between the springs and the strings. They counter balance each other.

Also, my S-500's both came with D'Addario strings which lasted all of 10 minutes. I replaced them with Fender Super Bullets which I have been using for many years. I do use a .009 -.042 string and can beat the hell out of them. Also note that this type of string has no winding on the bottom and tends to stay in tune a bit better than a wound button type of string because there is nothing to iterfere with your tremlo. They were intended for use on a tremolo.

[Alp]

After reading my first reply from yowhatsshakin, I spent somewhere around an hour adjusting the bridge plate height.
It seemed to me that with the strings tuned to standard tuning that one spring would have to come out to get the 3/16" clearance between the back of the bridge plate and the body.
I removed a spring and started adjusting tension and string tuning and used some pieces of wood sawn to different widths on my tablesaw as a reference to how I was doing. (I cut 2/16" , 3/16" and 3/32 pieces.)

It quickly became apparent that to get the 3/16 clearance that I would have to loosen the two bolts that hold the bridge plate to the body because as the gap increased from where it was originally set (about 2/32") towards 2/16" the plate was no loger level and developed a downward slope towards the pickups.
I did not feel good about loosening the bolts so I instead worked on leveling the plate with the body. I put the third spring back in and went ahead.

I played the guitar for a while and am content with the results (that are not much off from what they were when i purchased).

Today I read the other replies. I have to agree with Mick and Darwin. Getting the settings specified in the manual was not going to happen without a major bit of work on the guitar. The guitar currently plays well, but I find the action high which causes me to "stumble" on the strings.

Today I took some measurements. They may or may not be accurate. Some of these measurements are difficult to take with a ruler and a micrometer, I do not have a set of width gauges.

My bridge plate is level and has a gap of 3/32" between the lower surface and the body.

The low E has a gap of about 0.038" between the bottom of the string and the first fret (0.016" to 0.018" specified).

At the nut the space between the bottom of the low E and the fretboard is about 0.0765"

The gap between the bottom of the saddle for the low E and the baseplate is a little more than 2/32" (4/32" or 1/8" specified).

The gap between the 22 fret and the Low E is about 0.093" or a little less than 3/32", (0.062" or 2/32" specified).
The same gap at the high E is 2/32".

I lowered the first 3 strings at the saddle a tad. I felt they were a bit high just after I got the guitar home and worked on the intonation.
It seems the action on the guitar is (still) a bit high going by the space between the low E at the 22nd fret and at the 1st fret. I would suppose that further tweaking of the saddle heights and maybe a bit of work lowering the nut would help.

Again, I want to state that my measurements may or may not be accurate.

Alp

[MickDanger]

You know, when I got my S-500, I did notice that the nut was much higher than spec which made it a bit of a pain to fret at the first fret. I replaced it with a Tusq-XL, which is just a tad low, but the action is easier ( I used a stock precut nut for a strat. Not a perfect fit but was useable). Also, I did have to adjust the truss rod some to get rid of some buzz below the 12th fret. You might want to check the bow in the neck and see if it's close to spec. Buzzing above the 12th fret is saddles, while buzzing below the 12th fret tends to be truss rod.

[Alp]

I have not had a problem with any buzzing (yet?).

I'll leave relief and bow etc until after I get my action lower, where it is more likely to be a problem.

Alp

[MickDanger]

Very true. Didn't realize you had'nt gotten that far yet. I'm way too picky when it comes to buzz. All of it bothers me. But, if I can't hear it in the amp then it doesn't matter I suppose. Still, I wish I could get the action on my G&L's low like my Gretsch.

[Philby]

From reading all the posts above, it sounds like the Tribute S-500's and Comanches might have slightly different bridge and neck pocket specs to the USA models. That doesn't explain Darwin's observations re. his S-500, Legacy and F-100 though

My S-500 is a 1995 3-bolt and the factory setup instructions work perfectly. I smell the same rat as Darwin.

[MickDanger]

Philby,

That's what we were wondering since the only published specs are those for a 3 bolt neck. Granted, my Invader is a 3 bolt, but it has a Kahler and the specs for the G&L floater don't apply. But my S-500 Tribute is a 4 bolt neck and the neck sits quite low in the pocket. In fact, measured from the side of the neck to the body, the top of the fretboard is only 1/4 of an inch from the body.

[darwinohm]

More observations. First of all the F100- Return and the s500 are very similar in setup. The Legacy is a lot different, the bridgeplate is higher and the saddles are higher and can still be lowered much more than the other two. I measured from the back of the guitar (Heel) to the top edge of the neck and I find both (Legacy and S-500) are the same. I also measured the thickness of the neck at the neck pocked and they are the same. So much for the neck/pocket theory. Are the saddles a different thickness? The Legacy is probably a 2007 and the S-500 is probably a 2004. Am waiting to see if Craig comes up with anything.-- Darwin

EDIT-- Upon further inspection I see that the saddles between the Legacy and S-500 are different and that may be the answer to what I was questioning. I cannot get a caliper in to measure the thickness but the saddles on the S-500 appears to have a higher profile saddle and the legacy also has more of a groove for the string. That would certainly answer the question I was dealing with in my mind. All my guitars work very well and for me , that is the bottom line. Craig will let us know if anything has changed.-- Darwin

Alp, one more question for you. After reading your post I am confused as to whether you are adjusting the spring claw after changing the post height. It appears that you may be removing a spring rather than adjusting the spring claw to make the trem level after any adustments. Just asking as I use 2 springs on some to give the trem lighter action. But the claw has to be adjusted after string changes and several tunings until the trem is level overall at a rest. Also the height of the necktop edge to the body on mine is .375 in -- Darwin

[yowhatsshakin]

Hey Alp,

One thing I apparently did not make clear enough in my original response is that, as pointed out by Darwin, the bridge plate being parallel to the body is of the utmost importance. This ties in to your 4th question and my response to it. If your bridge plate is sloping downward to the back of the guitar, you'll have the problem of the string traveling over the saddle over a too long of a distance with the potential problem of buzzing at the saddle. If your bridge plate is sloping downward to the pups, the string may not run over the right point of the saddle either causing a similar problem. With the bridge plate parallel to the body, and the way the saddle are machined, you have the optimal situation.

So, yes, if you wanted to create a gap of 3/16", you would have to need to raise the posts. But as pointed out by others, this might not be necessary, foremost by the fact that you may like the action. On my Legacy Special the height of the bridge plate happens to be 3/16". And yes, I have also used a level and feeler gauges to verify that body and plate are parallel to each other.

Sorry for any confusion.

- Jos

[Philby]

In fact, measured from the side of the neck to the body, the top of the fretboard is only 1/4 of an inch from the body.

Wow. That's really low. It's more like a standard Fender strat configuration where the neck just peeps above the body.

On my S-500 the neck sticks up at least 1/2 inch from the body at the neck pocket. This makes the strings so high above the body that I need to raise the pickups to the end of their travel to get the best response. But the 3/16" tremelo gap is perfect with this geometry.

Now I'm really confused.

[MickDanger]

Philby,

Yeah, I'm starting to get a bit confused as well.. Although you have to remember that the Indonisia made S-500 has a 9" radius, and prior versions have a 12". So, my side profile will appear somewhat lower than a 12" radius. I would guess that at the center point of my neck it would be closer to 3/8". But what Darwin says my hold a lot more weight. If the saddle profiles are much thinner on the Legacy, that may well account for the difference in setup.

[Craig]

I have brought this post to John Toner's (G&L Customer Service) attention.
I will post a followup as soon as I hear from John.

Stay tuned.

I have heard back from John:

Currently, the setup between the USA Legacy/Comanche/S-500 are identical to a 2009 Tribute Comanche that I compared to.

The distance between the body and the bottom of the bridge should be 1/8".

The PDF Set Up file only pertains to the early G&L instruments of that time.

The dimensions and specs have changed over time as the instruments were tweaked or changed over the years.

Steve Grom has done much to standardize and refine our instruments. The result is a line of instruments that are more
consistent in quality, better component fit, and better playability.

I've asked him for a cutoff year for using the original G&L Owner's Manual and if there are any changes to the
other settings in the existing PDF file?

Stay tuned for more info to come.

Hope this helps.

[darwinohm]

This does not surprise me. Thanks for getting back to us Craig!!! -- Darwin

[Craig]

Here's some photos John sent me:






Hope this helps.

[MickDanger]

Craig,

Thank you. Now I know I'm not nuts! I thought there must have been a reason why it only played well at 1/8th. This confirms my findings. And yes, it might be very helpful to others to know a cutoff date.

Thank you so much

[Philby]

Thanks Craig. I too am really intrigued to find out how the 'standard' factory setup might have changed through the years.

[Alp]

Thanks for looking into this Craig.

I think it is important to have the correct info on hand.

I'd like to ask if the imports should not conform to the American made model specs or if there are some minor differences with these models.
I have 2 Indonesia Comanches that were likely made about 2008. They are similarly off from the PDF manual specs.

From the supplied photos I can see the gap between the bridge plate and body is a little more than mine (when the plate is level) and that the saddles on the light blue guitar are MUCH lower than mine. Not sure about the amber guitar. I understand these are American made models?

A question comes to mind... What should the measurement from the body top to the upper surface of the fretboard between the 19 and 20th frets be? Are import necks the same thickness as American made model necks?

Thanks again

Alp

[Craig]

More from John Toner:

I checked a USA Legacy and a USA S-500 that I built yesterday against an '09 Tribute Comanche for the set up.
My set up is as follows:
At the 12th fret, the #1E should measure 4/64" from the top of the fret to the bottom of the string.
The #6E should measure 5/64"
The strings in between should taper up between these.
The bridge set up should be about 2/16" from the body to the bottom of the bridge.

See the attached photos.

I checked the neck heel dimensions of a Tribute ASAT Classic neck against a USA ASAT Classic.
The width on both are 2.23”. The thickness of both necks at the 22nd fret is 1.02”.

Legacy DFS bridge:


S-500 bridge:


Tribute Comanche bridge:



My note: Because the neck radius of the Tribute Comanche is 9", the height of the saddles will be different
from the USA Legacy and USA S-500, to match the 9" radius.

Hope this helps.

Note: I added this information to the G&L Tech Tips sub-forum of the G&L Knowledgebase.

[Alp]

Yes!
Thank you for checking this out for us!

Not such a big difference after all.
These numbers are much closer to what I am seeing on my comanche and I will pass the info on to my brother about his.

Does the 0.016 to 0.018" gap between string and the first fret still apply for the comanche?


Alp

[Lefty]

Perhaps it's time for G&L to publish the setup specifications for ALL current models? It certainly would save a lot of time when trying to solve a setup problem. I'm just sayin'

[Craig]

Perhaps it's time for G&L to publish the setup specifications for ALL current models? It certainly would save a lot of time when trying to solve a setup problem. I'm just sayin'

These are the latest and have been posted in the G&L Tech Tips section of the G&L Knowledgebase for some time:

Current Factory setups for DF vibrato G&L guitars
Current Factory setup for G&L guitars with hardtail bridges