What difference does shaving down a bridge (not saddle) make on tone??

[Alan Carruth]

As usual, a good post from Wade. I'd like to make a point, though.

I often think of each guitar as having a 'center': a default sound' so to speak, that it will make easily. There are a lot of dimensions to this, including things like the treble/bass balance, attack/sustain, overtones/fundamental, and so on. There is also the matter of how big the center is: how far a player can move the tone off that default sound. Some guitars tend to have small centers; they do one thing, which may or may not be what you like, and that's all. Others will respond to changes in technique with fairly large changes in timbre; they have a 'big center'. A good guitar like that can cover a lot of ground stylistically, provided the player has the chops to exploit it, and keep it under control.

What shaving the bridge down does is to move the 'center' a bit. It may or may not make it bigger or smaller. If the guitar has a small center to start with, and you move that, you may find that it will no longer make a sound that it used to do easily. This all depends on a host of variables, may of which we don't really understand.

[CTGull]

Originally Posted by fazool

You may not have been able to anyway.

In the 70's Yamaha had the horrible idea to epoxy their necks in place - suggesting this would make them more stable over a long time.

What they found was that the necks still need a reset but are now essentially not removable. So people have gone to extremes like sawing the neck off and bolting it back on, etc.

So, If you had one of these unfortunate things, shaving the bridge was your best bet, IMO.

Why do people keeps pushing the myth that Yamaha epoxied their necks?? I've removed 5 necks from early 70's FG's and they were all hide glue. The problem is the neck pocket is 1/8" to 3/16" towards the 14th fret, and they used LOTS of hide glue. In most cases they glued the heel to the sides of the guitar. It's not the TYPE of glue they used, it's the AMOUNT of glue they used.

[walknbass]

So would you buy a guitar with a shaved bridge and can you do a correct neckset on any guitar with the neck shaved? Inquiring minds!