Lari is quite a wizard with not only understanding mechanics, but he also has the skills to do the metal work. I couldn’t find any ready made solutions for the problem, so Lari and I started brainstorming the part.
We’ve continued using the Schroeder locking studs ever since, in all the guitars we make with wraparound bridge. The quality was excellent, and the studs did exactly the job I wanted them for. Jason had gotten there first! I ordered a few of those studs to try them out.
Then I stumbled upon the locking studs my fellow luthier Jason Schroeder had designed. Lari (one of my luthiers) and I were drawing a locking stud that would be easy to use. I wanted it to have a wraparound bridge – if only those drawbacks were solved somehow. I’ve felt it’s not designed right, and so I’ve steered clear of it.Ī few years back I started to design the Unicorn Supersonic guitar. There is a constant force of about 60 kilograms pulling the wraparound bridge forward, so it’s no wonder that sometimes the wood gives in. This can happen if the fit of the bushings is too loose – or if the body wood is soft (like mahogany or spanish cedar) and the wood compresses over time, making the holes oval shaped. Or, the bushings have started to crawl up from their holes. I’ve seen guitars where the bushings of the wraparound bridge have given in and the whole unit is leaning forward. This results usually that after adjustments the bridge sits leaning forward, in an angled position in the loose stud slots. The traditional wraparound models are mounted with studs that need to have a pretty loose tolerance so there’s any room to balance the height of the low and high strings. I was reluctant for a long time to offer wraparound bridges in any of my guitars. This story describes perfectly my approach to guitar design in general. I’ll start from wraparound bridges for one particular reason.