wrapping strings around a stopbar tailpiece?

[fenrirlupus]

what does this do?

 

(and no, i don't mean a wraparound that has the bridge on top, i mean stopbar/tuneomatic setup... why do people sometimes wrap strings around the stopbar?

[Swoop]

If I remember correctly it increases the string to body contact, as there is a greater amount of string being used, which effectively increases sustain, and I suppose it may have some other tonal effects. That's why a lot of Teles are a string through design, better string to body contact, better sustain and tone. Personally I think, in terms of a Stop Bar and Tune-O-Matic at least, any advantage is probably minimal, though some folks swear by it. And some folks just like the way it looks. I personally don't much fancy my guitar strings bending around the tailpiece like that.

[Ricochet]

"Loose" string-feel, easier bends.

[Parabar]

Wrapping the strings over the stopbar also has the effect of decreasing the break angle of the strings over the bridge. Some players who are prone to breaking strings do it for this reason, although I suspect there may also be a less-than-perfectly-cut bridge saddle involved as well.

 

My stop-bar tailpiece guitars have all the sustain I could want out of 'em with the standard configuration.

[Swoop]

You can achieve the 'softer feel' by rasing the tailpiece so the angle of the strings from bridge to tailpiece is approximately the same as the headstock. But I'm sure you were well aware of that. I personally always have the stop tailpieces wound right in on my guitars. I don't fancy increasing the leverage on the studs, bushings, and the wood around the bushings even if it is only by a small amount. I don't have a problem with bending anyway. Maybe I'm just tough or the strings I use are easy to bend. I'd say the latter, the DRs on my stop bar equipped guitars are renowned for being great for bends.

 

It does work though, rasing the tailpiece. I put my basic setup skills to use on a mate's Squier Strat just the other day. He's not as well versed or comfortable with messing with guitars as I am. I'm no expert, but I know what everything does and how to make some basic improvements. We set his trem to the Fender specified 6mm height from body to bottom of bridge, and he was very pleased with how buttery it felt to play after that, and how much easier it was to bend. He's a Pink Floyd fan, and it's fairly common knowledge how much David Gilmour liked to bend! The bridge was previously sitting flat against the body on it, sort of negating the whole purpose of having a trem I thought.

[AnthemBassMan]

-Actually I just do it because I like the way my hand sits on the strings with them wrapped over the bar. I haven't really noticed any slinkier feel. I mean it's not my Strat with 11-50s on it. Give it a shot and see if you like it.

 

 

L8R,

Matt

[kevin kyle]

my opinion its over rated and doesn't do jack

[Guest icantbuyafender]

my opinion its over rated and doesn't do jack

 

which is why it is just that.... your opinion.

 

To each his own.

 

I wouldnt think itd be over rated since Ive really not seen this until recently.

 

but decreasing the break angle over the saddle makes sense to do if you are a habbitual string snapper.

 

i dont have that problem, so i leave em as is.

[crispy77]

I did it for a while, I use to break a lot of strings on my Paul, but that was in my earlier "ham-fisted", super thick pick using days. It did cut down a bit and I liked the idea of wrapping the strings around rather than raising the tail piece. Now that I have a slight bit better playing technique and much thinner picks, I've gone back to the strings straight through.

[antwhi2001]

I've been playing over 30 years, switched to this method about 4 years ago and won't go back.

Bends are slightly easier and I break fewer strings doing power chords. Those reasons are good enough for me.

[AS90]

It means you can use 11s but they feel like 9s. I used to do this on my Les Paul, the strings would sometimes slip off the saddle though.

[Stig]

You guys know you can just turn those screws and raise the stopbar, producing the same effect?

[Ricochet]

You guys know you can just turn those screws and raise the stopbar' date=' producing the same effect?[/quote']

 

It's not that simple. The theory is the transference of tone and sustain is improved because you screw the entire TP-posts down to the body.

[Red 333]

One reason some people wrap the tailpiece is to keep the bridge from collapsing. Some players like to set their stop bar very low, in order to increase the mechanical coupling between it and the top. As result, the strings take a very steep angle as they leave the stop bar and meet the saddles. The strings can touch the edge of the bridge's body this way, which can have a negative effect on tone. Worse, the increased downward pull of the strings can pull the bridge posts toward the stop bar, "collapsing" it over time.

 

Wrapping the tailpiece provides the advantages of low stop bar position (so good mechanical coupling), while the strings meet the saddles at a good break angle, as they're crossing the top of the stop bar, first. The break angle is great enough to clear the bridge's body, and there's enough downward force on the saddles so the strings don't slip, and screw up the intonation. It's not so great that it pulls the bridge backward.

 

Most players also find their set up feels a little slinkier when the break angle is not as steep (which is the reason many raise the stop bar). If it's too steep, your tuning can slip, though.

 

See, whether this set up (or any set up) works for you depends on a lot of pieces and parts that have to work well together as a system in order to produce the best results. One factor we haven't mentioned yet is the quaility of the hardware. On some guitars, you can raise the stop bar all day long without any noticable change in tone or sustain, simply because the studs and bushings are not made to exact tolerances, so energy is lost regardless of what position they are in. So saying things like a lower stop bar increases tone or sustain is a rule of thumb, but not an absolute rule. The body of the guitar may naturally resonate in such a way that stop bar height is irrelevant, too. It depends.

 

Each individual guitar has some set up where it plays and sounds best, but it's different for every guitar. That's why it's good to learn how to do your own set ups, so you can experiment with what sounds best and feels best to you on that particular guitar.

 

Dan Erlewine has written some great books on guitar set up and repair: How to Make Your Electric Guitar Play Great! and Guitar Player Repair Guide. Every guitarist could benefit from one or both of these!

 

Red 333

[IbbysB4Epis]

Raising the tailpiece also helps with "Sharp G string and not enough saddle travel" intonation issues. I have 3/16" stainless spacers under the tailpiece on my guitars. The spacers function just as though the tailpiece is all the way down on the body with the benefits of a raised tailpiece.

[caliban335]

On page 147 of the book "The Early Years of the Les Paul Legacy" Robb Lawrence wrote the following as part of a section on Goldtops and the then new Tune-O-Matic bridge. I'm providing it verbatim, including bad grammar and punctuation.

 

"To complete the assembly, the new bridge was used in conjunction with the stop/stud tailpiece - this being generally placed 1 9/16" behind the center of Tune-O-Matic bridge to anchor the strings. Today, many people are unaware that, originally, these items were depicted in the catalogs and shipped normally with the strings over the top of the tailpiece (the way it was designed). This original stringing method is naturally comfortable to rest your hand on at the bridge area. With the studs screwed in deeply for full vibratory string-to-body contact, the guitar's overall sound is enhanced as it was intended. It also helps to prevent the strings from breaking as easily on the sharp metal edges. Furthermore, instead of the tension just pulling on the stud screws laterally, when wrapped around the stop bar, it torques the tension in the body differently (as inherent with the Goldtop's big tone). The original method results in more body resonance and better acoustic tone."

 

I don't know whether it's authoritative, but I thought I'd pass it along.

[dh82c]

Some great ideas here. I vote that RED333 wins tho :)

[Red 333]

On page 147 of the book "The Early Years of the Les Paul Legacy" Robb Lawrence wrote the following as part of a section on Goldtops and the then new Tune-O-Matic bridge. I'm providing it verbatim' date=' including bad grammar and punctuation.

 

"To complete the assembly, the new bridge was used in conjunction with the stop/stud tailpiece - this being generally placed 1 9/16" behind the center of Tune-O-Matic bridge to anchor the strings. Today, many people are unaware that, originally, these items were depicted in the catalogs and shipped normally with the strings over the top of the tailpiece (the way it was designed)..."

 

I don't know whether it's authoritative, but I thought I'd pass it along.[/quote']

 

I think by "the way it was designed", Lawrence is referring to the fact that the piece of hardware we know as the stop bar today was designed and used for a time as a bridge. Naturally, the strings would have to wrap around the top for this to work.

 

This was before the development of the tune-o-matic.

 

The first '52 Les Pauls had a trapeze tailpiece. This particular piece of hardware was the original conrtibution of Mr. Les Paul himself (the rest of the guitar having been mostly designed by Ted McCarty and his engineers at Gibson). This trapeze tailpiece was different than most designs that preceded it, or the ones we see today on things like a Casino, where the strings fit into slots notched into the back of a suspended flat surface. Paul's trapeze was a suspended round bar which was designed to both anchor the strings AND be a bridge. The strings were suppossed to wrap over its top. I say "suppossed" because Gibson seldom shipped the guitar this way, probably because the set up seemed so unusual.

 

Anyway, for whatever reason--whether poor design or misunderstanding on the part of the set up guys who didn't wrap the strings over the top, Paul's tailpeice/bridge didn't work too well, and was replaced in mid '53 with a new, one-piece string anchor/bridge that was bolted to the guitar's top. It was called the McCarty bridge (after its inventor, Gibson president Ted McCarty). We know it today as the stop bar.

 

To terminate the strings, the McCarty bridge had a slightly sharper ridge on the top than most of today's stop bars. Naturally, the strings wrapped around it so the top of the bar would terminate the strings (ironically, much like Les Paul's trapez-suspended design). Otherwise, it was very similar to the the stop bar on your guitar today. It worked, but didn't provide much in the way of adjustable intonation.

 

That problem was solved by anothe genius McCarty invention, the ABR-1 tune-o-matic bridge. Gibson began using the tune-o-matics on Les Paul guitars sometime in 1955. The old McCarty bridge was moved further back on the body and thriftily reused as a stop bar tailpiece to anchor the strings.

 

McCarty designed the tune-o-matic in 1952 with archtop guitars in mind. They were Gibsons bread and butter back then; the solid body guitar was a very new thing. It's not known how much though McCarty gave to how the tune-o-matic would be used in combination with his old bridge, which was now acting as a stop bar tailpiece. The strings were wrapped over the stop bar on some of the earliest guitars shipped with the new tune-o-matic/stop bar combination probably because the set up guys in the factory were used to doing so when it functioned as the bridge, but no one's sure. For whatever reason, they soon stopped.

 

Gibson didn't abandon the original McCarty bridge: it evolved into the "wraparound" bridge (which provides better intonation), and was used on Gibsons budget and studio models, like the les Paul Junior. Of course it's still used today.

 

Happy wrapping! Or not.

 

Red 333

[Ricochet]

Paul's trapeze was a suspended round bar which was designed to both anchor the strings AND be a bridge. The strings were suppossed to wrap over its top. I say "suppossed" because Gibson seldom shipped the guitar this way' date=' probably because the set up seemed so unusual.

 

[/quote']

 

On the '52 LP the strings were supposed to run through the Trapeze-bar, and it was a severe design flaw. You couldn't properly mute the strings with your hand, nor intonate the strings.

As a makeshift solution people would topwrap the strings over the bar. Which was never intended to be topwrapped and left the guitar unplayable since the neck-angle wasn't like we know today. That changed in '53 with the introduction of the Stopbar and a increased neck-angle.

[Red 333]

On the '52 LP the strings were supposed to run through the Trapeze-bar' date=' and it was a severe design flaw. You couldn't properly mute the strings with your hand, nor intonate the strings.

As a makeshift solution people would topwrap the strings over the bar. Which was never intended to be topwrapped and left the guitar unplayable since the neck-angle wasn't like we know today. That changed in '53 with the introduction of the Stopbar and a increased neck-angle.[/quote']

 

 

The engineering drawings on Les Paul's patent drawings for his tailpiece, examples of the trap tailpieces on the guitars he used, and photos of him playing his guitars show the strings wrapping around the bar, not under it.

 

Les was said to have designed his tailpiece in 1945, and it was used by both Gibson and Epiphone after that. It was used on the ES 295 with the strings wrapping over tha bar as late as 1957.

 

Ted McCarty recalled that when Gibson showed Les the protype Les Paul signature guitar, "Les said, 'I have one of my Epiphones with a round-bar tailpiece, that the strings come down and wrap around that. I think it's better.' So I said, 'Okay, we'll use that.'"

 

Les' tailpiece worked well on archtops. The reason it didn't work on the solid body les Paul guitar wasn't because Gibson changed the neck angle from prototype to production, or after that, but because they lowered the neck deeper into the body on the production guitars. That way, they could sink the P90 pickups deeper into the body, too, and achieve lower string height. Subsequently, when the strings were wrapped around the tailpiece's bar, as intended, they were too far from the pups and too high off the fingerboard.

 

Gibson's solution was to wrap the strings below the bar, which meant you couldn't palm mute as Les Paul intended (that was afterall, the hallmark of his guitar playing style). It also meant there was not enough downward force on the bar now to keep the tailpiece from sliding around in the bracket that held it, and that wrecked havok with intonation.

 

Gibson fixed that with a bridge that would not move, which had already been a feature of the original protype McCarty showed Les Paul.

 

Red 333

[metalhed717]

i just do it cause it looks cool

[Ricochet]

Tnx for the history lesson Red. Very interesting. So am I to understand they didn't correct the neckangle in '53 but simply lessened the depth of the neck as originally planned?

 

I had to look up the trapeze patent filed in '52. I didn't know the original Trapeze had height-adjustable-posts!

[Red 333]

Tnx for the history lesson Red. Very interesting. So am I to understand they didn't correct the neckangle in '53 but simply lessened the depth of the neck as originally planned?

 

I had to look up the trapeze patent filed in '52. I didn't know the original Trapeze had height-adjustable-posts!

 

Rich' date='

 

That's the story in [i']The Les Paul Legacy[/i] and Gibson Guitars: Ted McCarty's Golden Era and other sources.

 

I've also read that after Gibson agreed to use Les' wraparound trap tailpiece, they might have expirmented with different neck angles and pup spacers to get the the strings closer to the pups, but were worried about how the P90 would perform raised so high on the body (remember, this was in the days before they could float the pups). So, they went back to the original angle of the first protoype, but lowered the neck and pups instead. I guess even at its lowest height, the stings were still too high when they wrapped over the bar of Les' tailpiece.

 

Gibson probably could have had the tailpiece manufactured so it would work better on the guitar and as intended, but they didn't. The story goes that before the LP made it into production, Gibson already had a number of the tailpieces manufactured, so they just decided to use them rather waste them, or pay to have new ones that would work made!

 

The rest is history.

 

Red 333

[Ricochet]

Tnx Red. If Gibson just had followed Les's directions and original design, we'd probably all be playing Trapeze LPs.

[lpfan]

I believe that Billy Gibbons uses the "wrap around" method for stringing his guitars. It seems to work really well for his bluesy style.