TOM WEIGHTS
Guitarist|October 2021
Gigs are back! Are we ready? Er… no. Some peculiar things are going on and Dave Burrluck needs to fix ’em
Dave Burrluck
TOM WEIGHTS

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.

This story is from the October 2021 edition of Guitarist.

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This story is from the October 2021 edition of Guitarist.

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