Bigsby B7 Tailpiece

Neon-Gecko

I have been toying with the idea of designing and building a guitar for myself. Even though I build guitars, I have never sat down and designed one from scratch, so this is a bit of a learning curve for me.

With some imported timbers becoming more and more difficult to source locally, I thought that I would experiment with Kiaat as a body timber on this build, maybe even use it as a cap on Mahogany and just see how it works out.

Now for some obscure reason, I find that I quite like the idea of using a Bigsby B7 bridge on this build, for no other reason than I like the vintage, retro look of it. The only problem is that the length of the B7 (intended for archtops) throws my whole design out by me having to move the scale length further forward than I would like, making the body look unnaturally stretched.

So my question is, is it worth the effort to redesign simply for the look of a tailpiece? I don’t have any experience with Bigsby, but there must be something to them if they have been in the market for over 50 years, so I take it they are good?

Any thoughts would be much appreciated…

Gearhead

You must have considered the B5 or B50?
The upsides to the Bigsby imho are no loss of tone, good feel and, as you say, looks. On the downside, they do not have that much range and compared to a stop piece they are heavy.
You might just join the neck to the body at a higher fret, to keep the body shape but create space for your tremolo.

Neon-Gecko

Thanks Gearhead. I had a look at the B5 and they seem to recommend it for a flat-face, where I’ll want to do a contoured top. Also the B5 doesn’t look anywhere near as cool as the B7 IMO.

I don’t really mind redesigning to accommodate the B7, but I just wanted to see if it was worthwhile going the Bigsby route.

I suppose that I could just shift the whole scale length up a little and extend the top horn so that it’s lined up over the 12th fret.

singemonkey

Which is the one without the tension bar? That one requires less space it think. B9 maybe? Often seen on Gretsches and other archtop hollow-bodies.

It might help if you show us a picture of your plan for the guitar.

Bigsbys are awesome. The vibrato unit with the most transparent tone IMO. Not for Van Halen style vibrato, but you can make some awesome sounds with them nonetheless. I wonder if they are really so heavy - given that they're made entirely of aluminium - compared to the blocks contained in strat and other types of vibrato units. But I've never held one of those in my hand for comparison. Bigsbys though are a lot lighter than the large chunk of metal you see suggests.

Ah. A Bigsby B6 is what I'm thinking of: http://www.bigsby.com/vibe/products/vibratos/bigsby-b6/

Gearhead

It would not be hard to flatten a piece of your carved top to accomodate for the small B5 footprint. Looks are a personal thing, can't comment.

MikeM

Just curious.. Why not the B3? I don't know anything about these and am now curious ?

Neon-Gecko

Here is an image of the guitar design so far. Scale length is 25.5” with 22 frets. The body dimensions are 456 mm x 315 mm. I have still got some tweaks to do to the body design and the headstock will be added later, once I know what the body shape will look like.

The problem I have is that I only have 111.26 mm to fit the tailpiece at the moment.

Here are the measurements of the Bigsby tailpieces, I have excluded the hinge dimensions on the bridges that have them, as these won’t affect the placement.

B3 149.30 mm (Thanks for pointing that one out Mike.)
B5 120.65 mm
B6 177.8 mm
B7 177.9 mm
B70 179.4 mm

As can be seen, none will fit without adding to the length of the body. From what has been said here about Bigsby so far and from what I found out on the interwebs, I know that I am really keen to go this route. Any ideas?

MikeM

It's a design constraint, work with it ?

Neon-Gecko

MikeM wrote: It's a design constraint, work with it ?

yep, I reckon your right... Back to the drawing board me thinks... sigh.

MikeM

I'm curious here.. ITO the shape, what has inspired/influenced you?

Neon-Gecko

I was after something unique. When I think electric guitar I automatically imagine a Strat, thanks to my Dad being a huge Shadows fan.

Instead of having the iconic lower horn, I thought that I’d go for something a little different.

As I said, this is more of a test bed for trying the Kiaat out, but I may as well try and make it look good, a joy to play and maybe I’ll end up keeping it in the long run. That’s if everything goes according to plan, that is…

singemonkey

B3 is correct. My mistake. B6 is for deep hollow bodies.

What might be a good way to go design-wise - if you're starting from scratch is to start with this, and modify:

Because the Torres guitar is the basic, recognisable aesthetic from which a great many others start - bits cut away, bits added. A Les Paul is practically identical - just with the lower bout cutaway. A Telecaster is so radically reshaped that it loses much of the curvaceousness and can be described as "ugly" by many (although often fondly).

I always think of this famous Man-Ray photograph:

as the aesthetic appeal behind the Torres classical shape.

In a way, starting with the classical shape is truly "starting from scratch" since this is the principle definition of a "guitar" in popular thinking.

Just something I've been thinking about for a little while. ?

Neon-Gecko

Thanks for the tip Singe. All of our current models were designed by another luthier. Not as easy as it looks this design thang, but with a pic like

singemonkey wrote:
I always think of this famous Man-Ray photograph:

as inspiration, I can't see how I can go wrong... :-[

Just gotta remember curvy… curvy… curvy…

Gearhead

Now that cleavage leaves even less space for a Bigsby ?