Crown Hummingbird bridge plate

[jaybee111]

After seeing DanPanther’s Alvarez Dove copy Tune-o-matic bridge conversion, I was inspired to dig out my Crown Hummingbird copy and do the same. I bought this guitar in 1971 for $50.00 and kept it more for sentimental reasons than it being a great guitar. I had an extra rosewood bridge and cut and shaped it to fit the adjustable bridge cavity. As I put strings on it, I noticed the bridge pins were loose and they worked their way up as the guitar was tuned. As far as fixing the loose pins, my plan is to plug the holes with dowel and re-drill. I looked inside with a mirror expecting to find bridge plate damage and there indeed is some. But even worse is that when the guitar was built, they left a gap between the bridge plate and the center brace, leaving nothing to support the ball of the D string except the guitar top. There is a smaller gap under the G string but it seems to grab the bridge plate. So I am asking for suggestions to fix this issue. I don’t really want to attempt to remove and replace the bridge plates. Hopefully someone here can give me some ideas to try.

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[Skarsaune]

That’s an unusual bracing scheme - there’s not usually a central brace on a top.
The hole that missed the bridge plate also hit the brace.
And there’s a screw through the scalloped brace to the left.

Replacing the bridge plate(s) is the correct fix. Barring that, you could cap them with a thin piece of hard maple, glued to the existing plate. The strings would have fresh wood where the ball ends rest then.

[jaybee111]

Thanks Skarsaune. You're right, it is an unusual bracing pattern, kind of a fan/ladder combo. Because of the center brace they put in 2 bridge plates instead of one. The screws are for the bridge.

I thought about doing what you suggest, gluing a thin piece of maple or rosewood to the plates and I will probably do that but I wanted see if anyone had other ideas.