TOM WEIGHTS

Gigs are back! Are we ready? Er… no. Some peculiar things are going on and Dave Burrluck needs to fix ’em

- Dave Burrluck

Getting ready for my return to playing live, I realise I need to spend a bit of time giving my gigging guitars some love. Now, it’s not like I’m Dallas Schoo and I’ve got The Edge on the phone saying he needs his 20-something gigging guitars all restrung and in tip-top condition before five o’clock. Nope, I’ve just got the two: one for the main stuff, the other for slide. Simple.

That said, I’m a bit embarrassed when I pull out my slide guitar, which I haven’t used since October 2020. Do strings corrode and fingerboards get gunkier just from a guitar being in a gig bag? Or did I forget to give it a wipe down after its last hurrah? My main guitar, a start-up ultrabasic-spec Knaggs Kenai, has had plenty of use over these past pandemic months as a reference for any relevant review I’m writing. And before that, it had been a workhorse for a couple of years before gigs stopped. A bit of a clean-up, then, some new strings and I’ll be done.

But then I notice something odd. The tune-o-matic-style bridge (aka TOM) has sunk – or collapsed, which seems a rather dramatic term. What I mean is that the top of the bridge, which should be straight, now shows a noticeable concave curve [pic 1]. It’s not much, but it means that the saddle radius, which was 305mm (12 inches), is now a little flatter, the central strings are closer to the frets and, well, it doesn’t feel quite as ‘right’ as I remember. The bridge is a pukka Gotoh part, and regular readers will know I’m a big fan of its wares. I can’t quite believe what I’m seeing.