Glad to hear this was helpful to you. Welcome aboard. And if you have a minute, please post this video on a guitar forum.

I’m glad you enjoyed it. Thanks for stopping by.

I love the proverb. Thanks for sharing.

Right on.

Those old Chinese philosophers did in fact think of everything... even friction on roller bridges.

That's a great idea for another video.

Quackery is King. Thanks for dropping by.

Our pleasure!

Glad to hear it was helpful to you. Thanks.

Welcome aboard!

Thanks for watching!

Good point. Some of those guitars just don’t have enough of a break angle across the saddles.

Thanks for dropping by. Please tell your friends. It helps the channel grow. So I can make more.

And I think I like what you’re saying… LOL. Just kidding. Thank you very much for visiting. And I hope you enjoy the rest of the videos.

You make a very good point. I didn’t think of that. In fact, you just gave me an idea. This is steady customer of mine, so it’s just a matter of time when he will bring the guitar back for a setup. Let’s examine this bridge after one year, and see. I really think you have a good point and I guess it depends how heavy one goes on the lubricant. Thanks for pointing this out.

I wouldn't knurl the string. It would be better to rough up the string groove on the roller.

It’s gonna be difficult to make a Gretsch stay in tune, due to the headstock and nut design. The strings on most Gretsch Guitars fan out towards the tuning post more than they do on a Gibson design. Plus the way they cut the nut on a Gretsch really doesn’t help. That’s vintage spec for you.

@@GuitarQuackery : Thanks! I really appreciate your honest answer. I would have liked a more positive one, given the fact that it’s not a cheap instrument. At least I know that I won’t be able to play it without going out of tune. Thanks! 😅👍

@@mariodriessen9740 I'm sure it can be played with a Bigsby and not going too much out of tune, if you stick to vibratos that are not too extreme. I would also entertain the idea of having a custom made String Butler made, to replace the truss rod cover. It would be costly, but I think it would improve things a bit. You would also have to make sure the nut is cut just right, especially if you do end up installing a String Butler type of accessory, which would alter the string break angle at the nut. Hope this makes sense.

@@GuitarQuackery : It does make sense. Absolutely! I want nothing else than very subtle vibratos anyway. Thanks for your advice. 😊

I would say you are right about that. There are laws of physics about conservation of energy. So, if there are objects that can be made to move (or vibrate) against each other, then for sure part of the energy from the vibrating string is used to move those small objects. Without trying to sound like I pretend to be an expert, I would speculate that whatever the resonance frequencies of those objects are, those would be the frequencies that would be depleted from the spectrum of vibrations, so I would speculate that in theory, yes, they change the tone, which in turn changes sustain. I think it would be quite interesting to build some kind of rig that would produce some conclusive test results. Thanks for your comment. PS - It's fascinating how the energy from the sun is transferred to the plants, then to humans who eat the plants, then to the arm that strikes a guitar string, then the string moves the magnetic fields around the pickups (and the small bridge rollers, LOL), then through the electronic circuits the energy eventually moves the speaker cone, etc... Fascinating stuff.

@@ErebosGR Guess it depends on design and quality of the roller bridge. Recently changed the tune’o’matic on my Gretsch to a Duesenberg trem and an ABM roller bridge, that gave me more sustain, probably because of the bridge having more mass to it. Also just changed a bridge on an LP Aria to a Schaller roller bridge, no noticeable difference in sustain, rings out as well as the original bridge it came with, I guess ABM would add on that guitar too, since they are heigher which means the posts are close to all the way down towards the body to get low string action. The difference between knife edge saddles and rollers shouldn’t have any major effect on sustain, material and how they are mounted might though.

The customer supplied it, but I'm pretty sure it was this one amzn.to/48WWDR4 (BW, this is an affiliate link, which means I get a small commission at no extra cost to you). You have to make sure you have the correct post spacing, radius across the saddles, string spacing and post diameter. Hope this helps.

I would speculate, increase break angle would increase pressure, which is like adding more weight on top of the rollers. This is the formula to calculate friction. Ffrict = µ • Fnorm The µ is the friction coefficient. Since we did not change the roughness or smoothness of the surface areas, by adding more pressure or weight, it means that we did not change the friction coefficient, which in turn means the result will be the same. To change the results, we need to change the friction coefficient. We need to smooth-out the contact surface between the roller and the shaft and/or rough-up the surface between the roller and the string. Once we do that, the friction coefficient between the roller and the shaft changes and/or so does the friction coefficient between the roller and the string. With that modification, the result will be different than before.

You're 100% right about the nut being the #1 cause of tuning issues on a Bigsby-equipped guitar, followed by the slack on the tuners. The guitar in this video belongs to a very good a loyal customer of mine. However, I always end up spending more time on his guitars because he has very high standards. The first thing we did on his guitar is replace the nut. The original Gibson nut was TUSQ and the customer wanted TUSQ XL (despite my recommendation against it). I actually recorded a bunch of videos of the project, but have not yet had the chance to edit. Then, when he was convinced that TUSQ XL did not accomplish what he had hoped, he decided to take my recommendation and we installed a nylon nut. The video was posted a while back kzfaq.info/get/bejne/bshhhthqra6bpac.html and I hope you have a minute to watch it. I also use a special wrap for the tuning posts, which simulates locking tuners, as it reduces the number of wraps to about 1/2 a wrap on each tuner. I am planning to post a video about that, as well. So, even with the nylon nut, the customer also wanted to have the roller bridge. It gave me the opportunity to make this video. Hope this makes sense. Thanks for chiming in.

@@GuitarQuackery thank you, It does. I take it your customer isn't fond of Telecasters then?

@@viperBSG I guess you're right. He in fact does not have a Tele. He mostly buys acoustic guitars, but lately he bought a couple of electrics. Every tome he buys a guitar he says it's the last one he'll buy. Were have I heard that before?

Let me go over your questions. I'm not having you on, when it comes to the accuracy of the information. The channel is presenting serious information, although there is occasional humor, just to make the presentations different. Friction doesn't quite work in the way that most of us think, intuitively. I vividly remember that being one of the pivotal points in my own education, in high school, as I've learned that fact in my mechanics class (I attended a tech high school). The size of the surface area does not influence friction in any way. The way my high school mechanics teacher explained it to me was through the formula f=μN, where friction "f" is equal to the friction coefficient "μ" times the normal force "N". The size of the surface area does not appear in the formula to calculate friction. Roughing up the surface will change the friction "f" simply because the rougher surface will result in a higher friction coefficient "μ" and the higher the friction coefficient "μ" is, the higher the friction "f" will be. The normal force "N" is always perpendicular to the surface. This also gets people confused if the surface is parallel to the ground, as the trajectory of the normal force "N" will be aligned with the trajectory of the gravity force. But the normal force "N" will clearly be at an angle, as soon as you tilt the surface. Of course, in our case (i.e. the string going over a saddle, under full string tension) gravity will play a minimal role and can be ignored. Also, I believe there is one more point of contact for the string: the tuning post. But those point of contact, which are strictly for the string, are not the only points of friction. I hope this makes sense.

@@GuitarQuackery I thought you were having a bit of fun but wasn’t 100%. With respect to increasing the coefficient of friction on the smaller strings, my thought was that it might promote rolling over sliding.

That's a very good idea I have not thought of. I guess that would be a good walk-around, although in a perfect world we would want to decrease friction on the roller shafts. But that would require some precision parts fabrication, I guess approaching the level of a Swiss watch. I like the idea.

@@GuitarQuackery the "perfect world" is all strings returning to pitch with at least moderate vibrato use. to me, that's decreasing friction on the rollers shafts but increasing friction at the string-to-roller interface. maybe as long as there is low is minimal friction at either location, the string has a better chance to return to original tension anyways and I'm overthinking this shit 😂

@@spectaculous1977 I think you're right.

I believe you are referring to the bridge posts. The bridge posts themselves are screwed into threaded bushings, with a lot of slop. So the bridge posts are in fact wiggly. The question is, do they reset back to the same position after the strings are played or bent, or after the use of the vibrato?

@@GuitarQuackery Yeah, does it return?

@@farber2 The answer is not going to be the same for every guitar and bridge of the same make and model. These guitar parts are so poorly made, variations are quite significant. To have any amount of reliability, these guitar parts would have to be made to a tighter tolerance. Some aftermarket guitar parts are in fact better made. The Mastery bridge for the Fender Jazzmaster comes to mind. But Gibson, Fender, Epiphone and Squire parts have too many loose and wiggly parts, made to loose tolerances.

@@GuitarQuackery I just replaced my Schecter bridge with a Gotoh, and it's great.

@@farber2 Gotoh does make good stuff.

I do not know what the word tone means.

I think any cheap guitar hardware components will always be inferior.

The book has a few extra pages for some bonus materials.

Yes, you can rough up the string groove on the roller, to increase friction.

Good point. I never even thought of that. There seems to be just enough friction to hold them in. But I agree, this is a design that’s basically balanced at the edge of a cliff.