Bridges...
Until I read through the forum I didn't have a lot of confidence in the stock bridge. It seems to be a decidedly dubious piece of engineering. Having read through the forum I now have no confidence at all!
I do have the possibility of getting one of the hipshot bridges, but examining the centreblock through the holes it seems to me that the fastenings are going to be disturbingly close to the edge of the block, so I'm mulling over something radical.
Supposing I rout out a square in the top of the body, parallel with the fretboard, and glue a hardwood block into that. Make the block a suitable width, ie a bit bigger than the current centre block. That would give me a block a few mm higher than the body which almost any suitable bridge could be screwed down to. Then I thought maybe a veneer on the headstock to match the wood of the bridge block, and perhaps one of the Artec wood cased pickups to match too - bubinga for all three maybe.
Might look something like this?
Does this sound practical, or is there some obvious flaw I have failed to spot?
[Later]
I've decided against this. I realised I was starting to turn what was planned to be a budget project into a rather complex expensive one. I figure that if something does go badly wrong with the bridge mountings in the centreblock then that will be the time to do something radical, and if it doesn't then no problem. The only thing that worries me is that the surface the bridge is coming down on isn't flat, and I'll need to do something about that. I think its going to get the Maxon pickup (see above) as its main pickup, and an cheap telecaster neck pickup (also from the bits box) up against the neck, more to give a justification for the extra knobs there are holes for than anything else. I figure pickups can always be upgraded if need be.
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