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Jld Bridge Doctor.


Forlorn Crusade

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I've not used one, but I've heard good things about them.  Regardless, for a '65 J45, you should pay attention to JWG's advice. Bridge plates used back then by Gibson were not high quality wood. At least the one on my '64 LG1 wasn't.  So they often suffered from bridge pin hole enlargement syndrome.  A fifty-five year old guitar, collectible to many, deserves to be restored to it's correct condition. 

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1 hour ago, fortyearspickn said:

I've not used one, but I've heard good things about them.  Regardless, for a '65 J45, you should pay attention to JWG's advice. Bridge plates used back then by Gibson were not high quality wood. At least the one on my '64 LG1 wasn't.  So they often suffered from bridge pin hole enlargement syndrome.  A fifty-five year old guitar, collectible to many, deserves to be restored to it's correct condition. 

Bridgeplate replacement can be major surgery, and often ends up tearing out a lot of grain on the underside of the top when you remove the old one. Stewmac sells a clever device for repair of bridgeplates using fitted wood plugs (that's an over-simplified description), which looks like one good solution.

The guy who works on my guitars replaced a late-1960's laminated plate on one of my guitars with a solid maple one a few years ago, but he was also replacing the bridge at the same time. The pieces of the old laminated plate show just what a difficult job its removal was.

Last year, he repaired the original plate on a completely original 1950 J-45 for me. It had a fair amount of grain tear-out around the pin holes. Instead of replacing the bridgeplate he filled the damaged areas of the plate with a tinted and filled epoxy mixture, then re-drilled and reamed the pin holes. He converted the bridge for use with unslotted pins, which gives a better opportunity for properly seating the ball ends of the strings.

All in all, it was a worthwhile approach, a bit less traumatic for the guitar, and it still has all the original components except for pins, saddle, and tuner buttons. I would do it that way again in a heartbeat.

 

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