GR-55 , Graphtech Piezo's performance of different bridges/saddles

Started by utensil, July 22, 2012, 11:17:45 PM

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utensil

I have 2 strats and 1 les paul equipped with graphtech ghost pickups and preamp. I've noticed a big variation in the perfomance on the GR-55. With the Fender style saddles there are a lot more false triggers and I have to play more carefully. With the Les paul style bridge it works MUCH better.(I have separate gk pickup settings for each guitar to try to optimize for scale length, sensitivity etc)

I also noticed when in tuner mode, the strats both show some kind of cross string interferance, i.e when I'm sounding a string the adjacent string is being detected by the GR-55 as having the same tuning. I suspect it could be because these saddles are in direct contact where as on the les paul style bridge the black piezo bits aren't directly touching.

anyone else have any experience with this.

I've ordered the OPT1 from RMC anyway to improve the strats, but I'm really very happy it worked well for my main guitar . The GR-300 patch is not really usable but everything else is near perfect. I get very few false notes and midi tracking is just as fast and more accurate than on my Axon ax-50. I will post my result with the OPT1 when I get it.


Jim Williams

For your Strats I suspect that you are correct about the saddles touching. There may be a solution, remove the saddles and file down the sides of the saddles and attach a thin piece of rubber to the sides and re-install them. This will reduce the direct contact issue. On my Les Paul I was getting some over tones from the other side of the bridge, so I took some foam tube from an old guitar stand placed it under the strings in front of the tail-piece. This eliminated the over tones and I recommend insulating your guitars hardware where-ever you may get over-tones or vibrations that may causes unwanted noise.
Skype: (upon Request)

Everything from modeling to the real deal, my house looks like a music store.

concordal

Utensil, here's an idea to keep your Strat piezo saddles from touching each other.

Since the saddles will pivot slightly, you can keep them separated when re-stringing by inserting small pieces of cardboard from a Kleenex box.  (See attached photos showing touching saddles and cardboard inserts.)  When you're all re-strung the saddles will stay separated due to string tension.

Hope this is helpful.

utensil

Quote from: concordal on July 23, 2012, 02:37:49 PM
Utensil, here's an idea to keep your Strat piezo saddles from touching each other.

Since the saddles will pivot slightly, you can keep them separated when re-stringing by inserting small pieces of cardboard from a Kleenex box.  (See attached photos showing touching saddles and cardboard inserts.)  When you're all re-strung the saddles will stay separated due to string tension.

Hope this is helpful.

Thanks!! Thats a really great tip, I'm going to try spacing out the saddles with this later and see if it improves the performance. I also just realized that with my les paul equiped graphtech even the modeled synth (i.e modeled sound number 18) works fine and I haven't put in the opt1 filter yet. The only thing is the sensitivities of strings in gk settings are down pretty low. If I can get the strats to work as well it would be fantastic.

utensil

Quote from: concordal on July 23, 2012, 02:37:49 PM
Utensil, here's an idea to keep your Strat piezo saddles from touching each other.

Since the saddles will pivot slightly, you can keep them separated when re-stringing by inserting small pieces of cardboard from a Kleenex box.  (See attached photos showing touching saddles and cardboard inserts.)  When you're all re-strung the saddles will stay separated due to string tension.

Hope this is helpful.

Dude, this seriously is a good tip, Thanks! I re-positioned my saddles by loosening the strings and putting bits of cardboard from the kleenex box and re-tightening and re-intonating then removing the strips. My graphtech saddles are slightly different from yours, the screw is not centered but I still managed to prevent all the saddles from touching.

results: Definite improvement,  I'm not getting false notes anymore and even the tuner is registering only the plucked string as it should. It's pretty damn good. I thought that piezo's would not work out well based on comments. Granted they require more tweaking and are susceptible to physical movement/touch but at this point I have no need to use the GK3 on any of the guitars.

It would be good if this tip was noted in the reference area for Piezo's and the GR-55. I haven't come across anyone else posting it and it is definitely useful for anyone wanting the best results.

mmmmgtr

Question....

If it's a vibrato bridge, wouldn't the saddles move once you bent down on the
whammy bar? For subtle use, maybe not. But if you slack the strings enough it
seems that the saddles would be free to shift again. Maybe I'm missing something.

Good tip, nonetheless. If what I say is true, you may just want to watch how crazy
you get with the whammy bar.

utensil

Quote from: mmmmgtr on July 25, 2012, 05:22:30 AM
Question....

If it's a vibrato bridge, wouldn't the saddles move once you bent down on the
whammy bar? For subtle use, maybe not. But if you slack the strings enough it
seems that the saddles would be free to shift again. Maybe I'm missing something.

Good tip, nonetheless. If what I say is true, you may just want to watch how crazy
you get with the whammy bar.

It is a vibrato bridge and you probably have a point there. I don't use it much so I haven't noticed that issue but I'm sure if I dived it down then the saddles may shift but so far a few dips haven't shifted the saddles.

MKB

Quote from: Jim Williams on July 23, 2012, 04:56:11 AM
For your Strats I suspect that you are correct about the saddles touching. There may be a solution, remove the saddles and file down the sides of the saddles and attach a thin piece of rubber to the sides and re-install them.
Lest anyone be concerned that filing the GraphTech saddles would be a problem, turns out GraphTech is OK with this.  I bought a set of Strat saddles awhile back for a vintage trem, but wanted to use them on a narrower spacing trem.  I emailed GraphTech and they said it was fine if I wanted to do this.  I used calipers and a belt sander to sand off the sides a bit (only sanded off the inside of the E saddles though), being careful to only take off enough material to do the job.  This method worked great, and was a complete success.

I'd also like to add the folks at GraphTech are the most helpful and responsive vendor I have worked with.  Their customer service is outstanding.  They were very careful to help troubleshoot a bad saddle on a very old GraphTech tuneamatic (it was making a signal but had very poor isolation to adjacent strings, and was a real bear to find).  They sent a replacement saddle and offered to refund the money if I returned the bad saddle to them.  The replacement saddle fixed the problem.

jshortz

I installed the same saddles in a partscaster and I am having problems with false notes.
I tried the cardboard and it didnt seem to help.
Are the saddles in my Freeway SA supposed to be a cardboard length apart?
The guitar works great.
Thanks

Elantric

Piezo pickups  are notorious for adjacent string vibration crosstalk. Lowering the GK sensitivity helps. Also read Jim Williams Piezo setup doc if using a GR-55

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