Where to buy Epiphone TBird bridge

Freuds_Cat · June 19, 2009, 04:37:00 AM

The Hipshot bridge went straight on to the Pearl Export (Epi Genesis) and I must say I'm very impressed with it.

dave120 · June 19, 2009, 07:46:36 AM

I'm not TOO worried about getting the right posts for the current. Right now the body is down to bare wood, I can always install new threaded inserts, assuming I can find ones that fit whichever posts I get. It probably won't be as hard as finding a bridge for this thing!

dave120 · June 20, 2009, 05:52:33 AM

Well the guy I bought this project from found the 3rd bridge post, so at least I'll have all 3 of those. I think I'll just buy a chrome saddle set and be done with it. If it bothers me that much I'll get them powder coated black or something. Buying the saddles will be the cheapest solutions though as its only $23 or so shipped for the set.

Nocturnal · June 20, 2009, 11:00:45 AM

Cool! You should post the Bird in the projects forum so we can see what you're up to. I saw one of your other posts at TB and it said something about the body being reshaped. Whats the story?

ramone57 · June 20, 2009, 11:25:05 AM

Quote from: dave120 on June 20, 2009, 05:52:33 AM
Well the guy I bought this project from found the 3rd bridge post, so at least I'll have all 3 of those. I think I'll just buy a chrome saddle set and be done with it. If it bothers me that much I'll get them powder coated black or something. Buying the saddles will be the cheapest solutions though as its only $23 or so shipped for the set.

fwiw, those allparts saddles are not the same size as the gibson originals. the allparts screws will work with a gibson bridge, but the saddles are about 1/8" shorter than the gibsons.

dave120 · June 20, 2009, 02:24:58 PM

The body wasn't so much reshaped as it was just a sloppy sanding job when they were stripping the old finish off. I've had to do some smoothing, and they basically sanded the rear cavity cover area flush, so the lip the cover sits in isn't there for half of it. I'm going to have to do some creative work with the router to get that back there to look original. Shouldn't be that bad though.

dave120 · July 28, 2009, 01:17:27 PM

I thought I'd post a follow up and thank everyone for their help in trying to locate this part. I ended up buying a Gibson bridge/tuners complete from someone. I tried to use the Gibson bridge on this bass but the posts were slightly too narrow to fit it. The Epi bridge fit fine though, so I used the Gibson saddles in the Epi bridge and it worked out just fine.

Here's the finished product:

It plays and sounds great! It took almost no time to get the truss rod adjusted and the bass intonation set to near perfect after being reassembled. It has nice low action and a great sound. Unfortunately it's also up for sale now since I'm moving soon and need to thin the herd. I did get a few gigs with this though but unfortunately it's just not as comfortable for me as my other basses so it's going to have to go for now. I may eventually venture back into the TBird world though, I love the look and sound of them!

Barklessdog · July 28, 2009, 01:35:16 PM

looks great, love the dark metalic blue. Nice