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Help Needed: Bigsby Alignment

• 

  • Rated: 37 ↑

  Jul 27, 2008 1:17 p.m. MR TROUBLE:

  I have a friend with a Country Club that appears to have a misaligned Bigsby. The strings don't seem to sit on the fretboard evenly, the high E end is too close to the edge of the fretboard. When I try to do pulloffs on the high E string I end up pulling the string off the edge of the fretboard.
  

  Any recommendations on how do to this? I remember reading somewhere on here that people have used washers or some piece of metal under the Bigsby hinge near the strap button. Or do new holes need to be drilled?
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  • Rated: 18 ↑

  Jul 27, 2008 2:11 p.m. K-Wad:

  There are two reasons for this, either the hinge pin hole on the bigsby was drilled crooked, or the bigsby was installed off-center.

  If the hinge was drilled crooked, putting a thin washer under one of the top two mounting holes will help align it. Simply remove the Bigsby, and place a very thin washer under one of the top two mounting holes. If it leans towards the treble side, put the washer under the bass side mounting hole (or vise-versa).

  If it was mounted off center at the factory, you will need to plug and redrill the mounting holes in the guitar.
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  • Rated: 15 ↑

  Jul 27, 2008 2:14 p.m. Matt:

  Edit: K-wad beat me to the punch... sorry

  My bigsby had the same issue. If you look at the bottom of the Bigsby by the strap pin, you can see the center line of the guitar. The bigsby should line up evenly and by symmetrical by this center line. If it doesn't, it's misaligned. A quick fix is to put a washer or something of the like under one of the screws (in your case the bass side) like you suggested. Play around until you get the alignment you are looking for using the pole pieces on your pickups and your strings as reference points.

  A more permanent solution is to realign the Bigsby by drilling it into the proper position in relation to the guitar's center line. I've never done this before so I can tell much else procedure-wise.

  The first method works just fine, but there's no reason not to fix it right. Hopefully someone else will chime in here if they've done this before.
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  • Rated: 18 ↑

  Jul 27, 2008 2:18 p.m. K-Wad:

  HA! For once I was able to type faster than someone else!!

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