Lovely guitar with a fantastic vibrato bridge design (originally by Steinberger).

Shame the design is fundamentally flawed! The bridge has broken. And I know for a fact that they're made of unobtanium (coz I emailed everybody and anybody who might be able to sell me one!).

However, sat in the bath just now, I think I've found a solution.

Watch this space for piccies and a bit of blurb...


To be continued...

I shudder to think what inspired you in the bath Paul!

Keep it down at the back or you'll be on your way to see Matron!

Okay. Here's the problem patient...



The bridge is quite a clever design, but the materials aren't up to the job. Instead of the usual spring claw attached to the timberwork, the springs are mounted directly to a lug on the casting that bolts to the guitar body. These springs attach to a cantilever arrangement under the moving plate that holds the saddles.

Everyone I've spoken to who owns one of these guitars says their bridge has broken in exactly the same place as mine.





I got the guitar given as another basket case. My first attempt at a repair involved gluing the broken part of the bridge casting back in with a fillet of brass across the top for some strength. It's this glue joint that's given up.

My new plan is to cut a brass plate that matches the footprint of the original bridge casting. I'm going to bolt a top-loading hardtail bridge to the plate, then fix the plate to the body of the guitar using the existing screw holes.

This means I can at least play the guitar until I get round to making a complete replacement for the part that's broken. I figure on carving it from some better quality metal, and modifying the lug that holds the springs so it has more strength.

There's a guy in Denmark with two of these guitars, and he came up with a novel approach to the problem. http://tjens.dk/HohnerSGLionRepair/

Torben was luckier than me in that his bridges hadn't broken, just started to deform. That page on his site shows some ingenuity!

His pictures also give you a better idea of the clever design that went into the bridge to start with.

I just need to make some more accurate measurements of the saddle heights on my own bridge. I'm hoping to correct another issue with the guitar. The saddles are too high, even cranked down as far as they'll go. If I can make the interim bridge sit around 3mm lower than the original, I'll be able to get the action that this guitar deserves.