Bridge plate on a bridge plate
 

I have a 40s Martin 00. At some point a “repairperson” decided to install a replacement bridge plate….on top of the original bridge plate. I assume the original was chewed up and they just opted to do this instead of filling the holes on the original.

The guitar sounds very good as is but I know it’d sound even better with just one bridge plate…especially with the replacement looking to be quite thick. My question is, would a luthier be able to remove the replacement and salvage the original? Or would both need to be removed and a complete replacement installed?

https://uploads.tapatalk-cdn.com/202...87b8f03a90.jpg

In short, yes, one bridge plate is better than two, but there’s a big qualifier here. There is the possibility that not only is the first bridge plate chewed up, but that the tear out extended into the underlying soundboard. Obviously you won’t know until the top plate is removed.

And no matter how careful one is when removing a bridge plate, there is always a chance of damaging the soundboard.

This is a very acceptable repair, and if the guitar already sounds good, there may not be much of a difference. Hopefully you have a very experienced looth who can give you good advice.

Remember the adage, “the perfect is the enemy of the good.”

Rick

Removing a bridge plate is a very serious job. Because they glued that one to the original would mean that basically the repair tech would still only have to remove the original one. It's quite possible that the whole assembly could be removed and then the original bridge plate can be separated from the capped one and salvaged. But also, there is probably a reason why someone decided to cap that old plate too and it's useless.

Given that it is functional and you like the tone of the guitar I'd suggest just leave it for now. And hey, at least they used maple :)

Removing a bridgeplate in situ, is up there in the one of the harder jobs to do on a guitar

Thanks all for the thoughts and advice. Another question - does the second bridge plate need to be as thick as it is? I could think that it could be quite a bit thinner with the other plate beneath it. Would sanding the newer plate down be an option?

In looking at the pics it is quite thick for sure, way more than necessary. If you have nothing better to do over the course of a few weekends you might be able to thin it out :)

It will be really difficult to do it evenly so, especially close to the X-Brace. But with time and perseverance you can get there. You may have better results by making a little 'scraper' our of some sort of sheet metal or something. Shavings are quicker then sanding.

That's a bit of an odd duck.

A overlay plate probably should have been 1/3 that thickness so there would have been minimal change in the stiffness and mass of the new bridge plate in totality.

I'd think the larger problem would be the size of the actual ball end openings.

If the pin holes were tapered to fit the pins the openings at the bottom of the bridge plate should have been so small that it would be really difficult to insert the ball end.

If the holes were simply drilled out to a larger diameter then the ball ends might have more of a tendency to chew up the bridge plate, which was probably the original problem that caused the need to overlay the original bridge plate.

I'd probably relegate this to one of those repairs that might have best been done differently, but correcting now might cause more damage than has already been done.

These overlay plates are easier to remove than one that is glued to the spruce top. That is because a hard wood like maple is less likely to be damaged during removal than spruce, which is much softer.
I remove these regularly, then repair the holes in the original bridgeplate.
I used to do a lot more overlays, and they typically were only 1/16" thick and 5/8" wide. IMHO, there is no good reason to make them larger unless the pin holes have been moved. Glued on with Titebond or hot hide glue, they can be removed easily with a little heat plus moisture.

Thanks all, very helpful additional info! I started doing some light sanding last night...cut some sanding blocks into pieces that were about exactly the width of the plate and went to it. Actually made some decent progress, both visually and sonically. But I have a couple scrapers coming that should help speed up the process, and now with John's post I have an actual thickness (1/16") to shoot for instead of just blindly going. We'll see how it ends up!

That looks like a mahogany top to me, so the worries about tear out during removal are far less that with spruce.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.