Quote:
Originally Posted by pagedr
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?
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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.