Gibson J-50 Bridge Replacement and Refret

Monday, May 15th, 2017

A customer had brought in this Gibson J-50 needing a lot of work. It needed a complete refret and a new bone nut, new tuners and the bridge needed to be replaced as it was lifting from the body. This blog will mainly focus on the new bridge.

Here, we have separated the bridge from the body. If you look closely, you can see there are 4 screws coming out of the bridge. it is not uncommon for some acoustic bridge to be bolted down but the screws on the outside edges of the bridge had been added later on in an attempt to stop the bridge from lifting.

Using the old bridge as a template, we were able to shape a new bridge to the exact dimensions very easily and get the string and pin holes aligned perfectly.

This guitar also had a nut that was bolted down but, the owner opted not to use this feature on the replacement. We plugged the holes to prevent glue from getting into them. This makes it so they can be used in the future, if desired.

We then bolted the bridge back to the body with only the original holes being used. These bolts are and added help with keeping the bridge in place while the glue dries.

After we have everything in place, we added pearloid dots to cover the bolts.

The next step was to rout the slot for the bone saddle. This specially made routing guide allows us to get perfectly shaped and positioned slots.

Now that we have the slot fully routed, it is time to make the new bone saddle.

We marked the radius on a blank piece of bone and sanded the curve into it.

After some final shaping and sanding, we have the saddle installed in the new bridge.

We opted for these Grover Deluxe tuners to keep with the vibe of this guitar. now that the all of the work is completed, it's time for a setup.

Here, we have the new bridge fully strung and holding it's place nicely.

Here you can see the results of the refret and new bone nut that we also created.

Now that the setup and test of all of the frets has been completed, this guitar can go back to it's owner and we can move on to the next project!

Gibson J-50 Bridge Replacement and Refret

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