Cool product!! Music City Tailpiece

MichaelW

MichaelW

Well-known member
This topic deserved it's own thread.

In my recent YANCGD post I mentioned that I had a Music City Wraparound Tailpiece coming as an upgrade for my Les Paul Special.

Nothing wrong with the stock bridge, in fact, it's very well made and intonates perfectly. (It's now riding on my Gretsch Jet Junior)

But I didn't know what when I ordered the Music City Bridge. I had assumed the one on the Epiphone would be a typical cheap alloy, tone robbing affair.
(It is some kind of alloy but made to vintage "Lightning Tailpiece" specs)

Anyway, I had only recently learned about these Music City wraparound tailpieces and from Tom "Uncle Larry" Bukovac. He raves about them and has a number of videos showing the difference acoustically they make on Juniors and Specials. It also comes with some resounding endorsements from other Nashville luminaries and guys like Robben Ford, etc.

It's not an inexpensive tailpiece but it's also not up-da-bungy overpriced like some other boutique bridge makers. (Most notably the big "C")

Anyway, it showed up in the mail today and I installed it on my Epi Special. (It will fit both US and Import stud spacings, any 82mm stud spacing)

I was super surprised how light it was. I don't know too much about the claims to the metallurgy or the alloy or any of that stuff, all I know is that it sounds freaking awesome. It intonates perfectly on my guitar and there's no "sitar-ing" that is common with wrap arounds. Plus it aesthetically it looks the part on a Junior or Special.

I also put a new set of strings on the guitar so I'm not claiming that all the difference is due to the bridge but it rings and rings with sustain unplugged.

Super pleased with it. I would use this bridge again if I wind up with any other wrap around style guitars.

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IMG_3551.JPG
 
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I had an experience just like this recently @MichaelW. I've had titanium gotoh saddles on my tele since Aug 2021 but also bought the brass gotoh saddles at the same time just in case I didn't like them. Now that we're back in N Ireland and I had some free time on my hands I thought I'd swop them over and see which I preferred. I'll be honest and say I wasn't expecting to hear much of a difference plugged in but the difference was really noticeable both plugged in and unplugged. I assumed a lot of it was in my head and down to new strings so left the brass on for a bit so they had a proper chance.

Mrs Octpuss has been learning to play for about 18 months now and has stolen the tele as her guitar to learn on. I hadn't told her I was changing the saddles when I changed strings and she immediately asked me what was wrong with her tele and why it sounded weird. After changing the saddles back without changing strings her tele went back to sounding 'normal' again. I've always had brass saddles on any telecaster I've owned but we're so used to playing this one with the titanium saddles that it just sounded off.

I'm a believer in everything makes a difference but always assumed saddles would be a lot more subtle. I'm genuinely surprised at how noticeable it was both plugged in and acoustically.
 
SillyOctpuss said:
I had an experience just like this recently @MichaelW. I've had titanium gotoh saddles on my tele since Aug 2021 but also bought the brass gotoh saddles at the same time just in case I didn't like them. Now that we're back in N Ireland and I had some free time on my hands I thought I'd swop them over and see which I preferred. I'll be honest and say I wasn't expecting to hear much of a difference plugged in but the difference was really noticeable both plugged in and unplugged. I assumed a lot of it was in my head and down to new strings so left the brass on for a bit so they had a proper chance.

Mrs Octpuss has been learning to play for about 18 months now and has stolen the tele as her guitar to learn on. I hadn't told her I was changing the saddles when I changed strings and she immediately asked me what was wrong with her tele and why it sounded weird. After changing the saddles back without changing strings her tele went back to sounding 'normal' again. I've always had brass saddles on any telecaster I've owned but we're so used to playing this one with the titanium saddles that it just sounded off.

I'm a believer in everything makes a difference but always assumed saddles would be a lot more subtle. I'm genuinely surprised at how noticeable it was both plugged in and acoustically.
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I've always been a fan of brass saddles over steel.....but man, now I have a strange impulse to try titanium hahaha. Would you say it's brighter than steel? I know steel works well for chicken picking and that kind of tonality, which is not how I play. For me, brass adds a little warmth and richness that works better for rock and roll. But I've never tried titanium....
 
MichaelW said:
I've always been a fan of brass saddles over steel.....but man, now I have a strange impulse to try titanium hahaha. Would you say it's brighter than steel? I know steel works well for chicken picking and that kind of tonality, which is not how I play. For me, brass adds a little warmth and richness that works better for rock and roll. But I've never tried titanium....
Click to expand...

Honestly I couldn't give any kind of comparison between titanium and steel. I've only ever used titanium saddles on this one telecaster and the only other saddles I've tried on it are the brass version. It was quite a good test though because the actual saddles are identical in their dimensions etc it's just the material they're made from which is different. I wanted to try the brass because I've always felt this guitar had a little too much top end when played acoustically and as I had the brass saddles on hand thought I'd give them a go. The main differences when played acoustically is that the guitar definitely was a little darker which I liked but the midrange was also different and not in pleasant way. But it was pretty subtle and I wanted to live with it for a bit to really give them a fair shot.

Plugged in, however, the guitar lost a lot of presence and a lot of the qualities I loved which I had always attributed to the pickups was now absent. It still sounded like my tele but it I had to really change the EQ to compensate and even doing that I lost a lot of brightness and presence that I loved about the neck pickup. The midrange was again very different between the brass and titanium. Again though I thought I'd live with it for a few weeks just to see.

As soon as Mrs Octpuss picked up the tele to practice a lesson she's been working on she came into the living room and asked what was wrong with her guitar. She thought it wounded weird and wanted to know if I'd changed anything. The saddles were changed back pretty much straight after that, I realised that either they didn't suit that guitar or we were so used to the titanium that it took it too far away from the guitar that we had both come to know well. I'm pretty sure it's the latter.

I'm also a rock, bluesy kind of player I definitely not a chicken picker or country player.

These are the saddles I have on there

Gotoh In-tune titanium compensated Telecaster saddles [SS-ITT] - £39.50

Gotoh titanium compensated in-tune Telecaster saddles.
www.axecaster.co.uk

Gotoh In-tune brass compensated Telecaster saddles [SS-ITB] - £17.99

Gotoh In Tune compensated Telecaster saddles in brass.
www.axecaster.co.uk
 
MichaelW said:
This topic deserved it's own thread.

In my recent YANCGD post I mentioned that I had a Music City Wraparound Tailpiece coming as an upgrade for my Les Paul Special.

Nothing wrong with the stock bridge, in fact, it's very well made and intonates perfectly. (It's now riding on my Gretsch Jet Junior)

But I didn't know what when I ordered the Music City Bridge. I had assumed the one on the Epiphone would be a typical cheap alloy, tone robbing affair.
(It is some kind of alloy but made to vintage "Lightning Tailpiece" specs)

Anyway, I had only recently learned about these Music City wraparound tailpieces and from Tom "Uncle Larry" Bukovac. He raves about them and has a number of videos showing the difference acoustically they make on Juniors and Specials. It also comes with some resounding endorsements from other Nashville luminaries and guys like Robben Ford, etc.

It's not an inexpensive tailpiece but it's also not up-da-bungy overpriced like some other boutique bridge makers. (Most notably the big "C")

Anyway, it showed up in the mail today and I installed it on my Epi Special. (It will fit both US and Import stud spacings, any 82mm stud spacing)

I was super surprised how light it was. I don't know too much about the claims to the metallurgy or the allow or any of that stuff, all I know is that it sounds freaking awesome. It intonates perfectly on my guitar and there's no "sitar-ing" that is common with wrap arounds. Plus it aesthetically it looks the part on a Junior or Special.

I also put a new set of strings on the guitar so I'm not claiming that all the difference is due to the bridge but it rings and rings with sustain unplugged.

Super pleased with it. I would use this bridge again if I wind up with any other wrap around style guitars.

View attachment 32820

View attachment 32821
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Cool!
On your Guitar, the Posts look parallel with the pickup?
On those 50's Gibson's, it looks like the the bottom Post is closer which causes uneven pull on the Bridge and issues???
 
music6000 said:
I just found this Video & It shows the offset Post's!
Click to expand...
Yah Uncle Larry can explain it much better than I can heh. But I do know that there was a lot of variance of where the stud
holes were located in those late 50's early 60's wrap arounds. I think it was the early 60's somewhere that they started locating the studs square to the pickup and introduced the so called "lightning" tail piece. (So named for the lightning bolt pattern of the intonation lines.) But even those have been made from various materials over the years. Aluminum, Zinc alloy, and now something called "Zamack". I was always a believer that you needed mass at the bridge to get best string transfer, yet a lot of folks swear by the aluminum Gibson tailpieces. I was expecting the Music City tailpiece to be a substantial hunk of metal.
Yet it's feather light, must be some sort of aluminum alloy. Yet, I'm getting tons of sustain and richness. Just goes to show, wtf do I know right? heh......
 
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MichaelW said:
I was always a believer that you needed mass at the bridge to get best string transfer, yet a lot of folks swear by the aluminum Gibson tailpieces. I was expecting the Music City tailpiece to be a substantial hunk of metal.
Yet it's feather light, must be some sort of aluminum alloy. Yet, I'm getting tons of sustain and richness. Just goes to show, wtf do I know right? heh......
Click to expand...

Interestingly the brass saddles I tried were twice the weight of the titanium ones yet the titanium definitely sustained for longer than the brass.

I don't understand it either
 
Then there's PRS that uses both. A Paul has said "everything that the string touches is God..."
Not exactly sure what that means but I get the gist. My PRS McCarty has brass string posts on the tuners, brass saddles on the TOM but an aluminum tailpiece. Go figure.....
 
MichaelW said:
Then there's PRS that uses both. A Paul has said "everything that the string touches is God..."
Not exactly sure what that means but I get the gist. My PRS McCarty has brass string posts on the tuners, brass saddles on the TOM but an aluminum tailpiece. Go figure.....
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I always wanted to try one of the faber hybrid bridges on my R7, it has a mix of titanium and brass saddles but alas my R7 was one of the guitars I had to sell to get back home. I'll have another les paul at some point and can try then.
 
SillyOctpuss said:
I always wanted to try one of the faber hybrid bridges on my R7, it has a mix of titanium and brass saddles but alas my R7 was one of the guitars I had to sell to get back home. I'll have another les paul at some point and can try then.
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Actually I had the Faber version in my cart and it was my close second choice. I've heard a lot of great things about them as well.
 
I think a bridge change can benefit good sound more than the average pickup swap. And I can't say one metal is best - it really does depend on the guitar. I have two Duo Jets, a '53 Vintage Select and a '59 Vintage Select. Both have TV Jones Filter'tron Classics (The '53 has classics which look like Dearmonds, which were the stock pickups). I like an aluminium Tru-arc Serpentune bridge on the '53 and a steel one on the '59. The '53 came with a cast aluminium Bigsby style bridge and the Tru-arc is a machined bar-bridge style. The machined aluminium has a more solid sound than the cast, possibly owing to the extra bulk, but I suspect that the machined aluminium is denser than the cast which affects the sound.

It's weird how much affect it has! On Teles I usually prefer steel saddles over brass, but not always. And I like "cold rolled" steel over stainless. Generally I don't like the sound of stainless steel but there are exceptions. Its crazy!

BTW mazak is an alloy which was invented specifically to be easy to mould and hold detail for things like toy cars. Matchbox cars have long been cast in mazak, which is (I believe) zinc, aluminium, copper and magnesium. It's also known as zamak as the name is made up from its constituents, much like the word alnico. It's very soft and unlikely to be a very good "tone metal".

And FWIW I really don't like Callaham bridges. I've tried a few and they invariably sound nasty to me. I tried his all-steel TOM and it was very harsh sounding to me. His Strat bridge is similarly harsh IMO - you may well love it! And he drills the tremolo arm hole at 90 degrees on some models which puts the arm at a ridiculous angle. Not a fan of Callaham and his snake oil at all.
 
HamishR said:
I think a bridge change can benefit good sound more than the average pickup swap. And I can't say one metal is best - it really does depend on the guitar. I have two Duo Jets, a '53 Vintage Select and a '59 Vintage Select. Both have TV Jones Filter'tron Classics (The '53 has classics which look like Dearmonds, which were the stock pickups). I like an aluminium Tru-arc Serpentune bridge on the '53 and a steel one on the '59. The '53 came with a cast aluminium Bigsby style bridge and the Tru-arc is a machined bar-bridge style. The machined aluminium has a more solid sound than the cast, possibly owing to the extra bulk, but I suspect that the machined aluminium is denser than the cast which affects the sound.

It's weird how much affect it has! On Teles I usually prefer steel saddles over brass, but not always. And I like "cold rolled" steel over stainless. Generally I don't like the sound of stainless steel but there are exceptions. Its crazy!

BTW mazak is an alloy which was invented specifically to be easy to mould and hold detail for things like toy cars. Matchbox cars have long been cast in mazak, which is (I believe) zinc, aluminium, copper and magnesium. It's also known as zamak as the name is made up from its constituents, much like the word alnico. It's very soft and unlikely to be a very good "tone metal".

And FWIW I really don't like Callaham bridges. I've tried a few and they invariably sound nasty to me. I tried his all-steel TOM and it was very harsh sounding to me. His Strat bridge is similarly harsh IMO - you may well love it! And he drills the tremolo arm hole at 90 degrees on some models which puts the arm at a ridiculous angle. Not a fan of Callaham and his snake oil at all.
Click to expand...

I had a callaham bridge on my strat for a few days before having to take it off and sell it. It was really well made and worked really well but damn it was bright. I switched it out for a wudtone which worked just as well as the callaham but the guitar sounded much more even across the frequency ranges.
 
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