The guitar had been custom-wired in ways beyond my knowledge and the original Tune-O-Matic bridge had  been removed.  Its bridge posts and thumbwheels removed, and two larger holes were drilled in order too install some crappy anchors that came with the Christian Piezo-saddle bridge. With the wires running out from under the bridge, and the thickness of the anchor flanges, made the action way to high.

I suspect that after the mod was done, Jerry would have a hard time with the action (perhaps that’s why the instrument seemed as though it had not been played in a number of years).

My shop-mate TK made new anchors from a solid brass bar; using the lathe, he turned it to the right diameter for a tight fit in the holes, knurled the outside, and threaded it internally to 8-32 (this is a size larger and stronger than than the normal 6-32 thread size).

Here the anchor is being screwed onto the post (which is being held gently in the jaws of the drill-chuck in order to not damage the threads).

When the post is released from the chuck, the jaws are tightened shut and then used to press the anchor tightly into the body with a bit of hide-glue for good-measure. The knurled outside, besides add to a tight press-fit, also accepts hide glue into the recesses and make for a very strong connection in the wood (and better tone transfer, in my opinion).

With the new anchors made and installed, TK turned to making made 8-2 knurled thumb-screw of steel to match the nickel plating of the new bridge (a “Pigtail”-brand Tune-O-Matic, in aged nickel to match the pickup covers). Here he’s turning a bar of steel to the proper diameter, and giving a heavy knurl, to what will be the new thumbwheels. His next steps will be drilling and tapping the 8-32 thread and “parting-off” (cutting them off) into thumbwheels. The edges of each thumbwheel gets a slight chamfer (bevel) during the parting-off operation so that the edges aren’t sharp.

The new bridge studs and thumbwheels — almost ready to go except that, in order to use them, the holes in the bridge need to be drilled larger to accept the 8-32 posts.

In order to drill the plate bridge without chipping or lifting the plating, I wiped a thin layer of superglue onto the top and bottom of the bridge up to, and around, the hole and accelerate it.

 Next I used a dowel-pin that matched the size of the bridge post hole to hold the bridge square and level while tightening the bridge into the vise.

With the hole located I went ahead and drilled the clearance hole for the new 8-32 posts.

After removing the superglue using Q-tips and acetone, the bridge is ready to go.