Bigsby, ES 295

[keoki]

Any advice/experience on bypassing the roller bar, i.e., over rather than under. I would think that bypassing the roller bar would mean less stress on the arch top. Less stress should be good. But I am a new owner. Thanks in advance for your experience and opinions.

[Ricochet]

Any advice/experience on bypassing the roller bar' date=' i.e., over rather than under. I would think that bypassing the roller bar would mean less stress on the arch top. Less stress should be good.

[/quote']

 

Less stress equals less pressure on the saddles equals less tone.

 

But if you insist. I think the roller bar comes off.

[Parabar]

The roller bar provides more string pressure on the bridge (where the guitar is designed to handle it) and to achieve an optimal string break angle over the bridge. On a big archtop like an ES-295, the Bigsby models B-6, B-60 or B-600 without the roller bar would be fine also, but those models are specifically designed for optimum string tension without the bar. Bypassing the bar on a Bigsby that has one could result in insufficient string pressure (depending what gauge strings you use) to produce good tone, or to keep the floating bridge stable.

 

On the other hand, it certainly won't harm anything, so there's no compelling reason not to try it out --- if you like the results, cool, if not, you can always restring under the bar.