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new production domed thumbwheels for Bigsbys etc. on Reverb
Posted: Tue Jun 18, 2024 1:57 pm
by dubkitty
someone is
finally making the domed tunomatic thumbwheel adjusters that are essential for Bigsbys with tension bars, Maestro Vibrolas (which ONLY work well with these, and work very well with them), and other guitars with tunomatics and vibrato tailpieces. they're cheap, too. standard US Gibson 6/32 thread, so if you have an overseas guitar with metric posts you'll need adapter bushings. this is the best thing you could possibly do for your guitar. the Vibrola on my Epiphone '62 SG was stiff and awful before i got vintage thumbwheels; now i can do Cipollina/Verlaine shit like i could on SGs when i was a teen in the 70s. i have 4 sets on order, two for the DeArmond/Guild project guitars and two for back stock. in the past i've bought vintage examples off Reverb for rather more than $4.57 a pair.
https://reverb.com/item/77424704-advanc ... its-gibson
Re: new production domed thumbwheels for Bigsbys etc. on Rev
Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2024 10:36 am
by friendship
Cool, how do they work exactly? My Bigbsy is set up great but my friend has an import Gretsch with really, really stiff tremolo action and I was wondering if I could help him fix it.
Re: new production domed thumbwheels for Bigsbys etc. on Rev
Posted: Mon Jun 24, 2024 10:25 pm
by Gone Fission
Isn’t the stiff thing fixed either by stomping on the spring until it breaks in or getting the soft spring from Reverend Guitars?
Still curious about the domed thumbwheels, though. I have zero clue what they do.
Re: new production domed thumbwheels for Bigsbys etc. on Rev
Posted: Tue Jun 25, 2024 9:30 am
by dubkitty
they allow the bridge to rock back and forth with the action of the tremolo, avoiding the common problem of strings binding on the saddles. with tension-bar Bigsbys and especially Vibrolas which have a horrible break angle, that extra little bit of literal wiggle room makes it easier to fuck with the pitch. it's a similar concept to the Gretsch "rocking bar bridge," which is convex where it sits on the string posts. you can see it move, as Galileo once said.
Isn’t the stiff thing fixed either by stomping on the spring until it breaks in or getting the soft spring from Reverend Guitars?
if the spring is the problem. when the problem is a steep break angle, the softest spring in the world isn't going to let, e.g., your Epiphone Wildkat work smoothly. Vibrolas by design don't have a spring
per se; the device itself is the spring. with the domed wheels my 1968 ES-335 works as smoothly with a tension-bar B7 as it used to with a B5.