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I am brainstorming a personalized design for an arch top tailpiece. I have built a couple with the Benedetto-style with the cable fastener, and several with a Gibson L7 style hinged type.
I am not totally enamored with the cable style.

I want to make a metal frame and body plate with a jack opening which I also use to access the bolt-on neck. Plan to cover with some kind of wood overlay.

Question is should I go with a hinged design or a one piece metal frame with essentially a fixed angle?

Any input from you arch top guys would be appreciated.

Thanks

Terry

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I don't think anyone can tell you what you SHOULD do. However, I have pondered this question myself, as I'm sure many others have done. In my case, I wanted to ground my strings through my tailpiece, but I wanted it to look like a wood tailpiece. I think you could use the jack hole to give access to the screws or bolts for your bolt-on neck. Dave Stewart posted a tutorial about doing that very thing here in our tutorial section. It is very informative.

Here is the solution I devised.

First drawing is a section of my wood cover, showing the scooped ramp leading down into the string feed area.
Second drawing shows the basic shape of my wood pieces. That little block on the bridge end of the tail piece was rotated 90 degrees so I could drill through flat grain rather than end grain. Everything was glued up and routed to accept the brass, which is detailed in the third drawing. Fourth image shows everything soldered, routed, bent and ready to go together. I used a tailpiece jack for this guitar.

I repeat: I'm not necessarily recommending this solution, but it worked for me. If you want to use it, that's fine with me.

The finished product will be attached to a follow-on post.

I sent my brass fabrication out to have the "show" part of it gold plated to match my tuners, pickup cover, etc. It was worth the money, and only took a little less than two weeks turnaround.

Once mounted, the strings bear against the brass part of the tailpiece, which contacts the collar of the tailpiece jack. That part goes to ground. This makes for quiet playing.

I glued my wood cover over the brass and also laminated on a veneer of burl walnut, to match other parts of my guitar.

There's no doubt about it--This has all the stoutness of a metal tailpiece and it grounds the strings, too, but I think it is fairly well disguised as a wooden tailpiece. By the way, the guitar was shot with water borne lacquer, but the tailpiece is a TruOil finish.

Here's how it came out:

If you are tempted to do something like my method, I also want to give you a few of provisos:

First, if you want to bend brass like I did, you've got to soften it by heating your bend points with a little plumber's torch. Then you clamp it in your vise and bend it with a hammer. Hammering it serves to work-harden it once again. If you don't soften it first by torching it, it can get real brittle at the bend point and break. You don't want that to happen! YIKES! There is plenty of information on torch-softening and then work-hardening brass available on the web.

Second, no amount of plating will cover a scratch in your brass, so patiently file and sand and polish any part that will show. I thought I did a good job of this, but I didn't. There's a visible scratch on my "show" plated part that I didn't polish out. Dang it. Thankfully, I'm the only one who ever notices it.

Third, gold plate doesn't stick well to brass, so you need to deal with a company that will give you some intermediate plating. My piece was flash plated with copper first and then with silver. Then came the nice gold plate. Gold plate sticks real well to silver plate. My "show" part has held up extremely well for about eight years now, which is more than I can say for the pickup cover, which came gold plated right out of the box. My pickup cover is showing freckles in the plating. I am pretty sure there isn't much (if any) flash plating under the gold there. Oh well.....

Beautiful work! That's one of the approaches I was thinking of. Thanks very much cphanna!

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

I agree! What a really nicely done tailpiece!

Always a delight too see your work Patrick.
Beautiful!

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wah
Wah-wah-wah-wah
Wah

What about tailpiece that pivots on a ball ala Ken Parker...

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Brad

Brad, I'm glad you posted. I was not familiar with Ken Parker's work. That's a very stylish guitar and I agree the tailpiece
concept is very cool. It looks lightweight, could probably be overlaid with wood and I'm sure a grounding path could be figured out if one is desired. Thanks again for bringing Ken to my attention.

Allan Carruth did something like that too with an Ebony ball.

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It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

The coolest thing about the pivoting tailpiece is you can change the string length and tension by adjusting the tailpiece one way or the other. Scott Walker is also doing something similar these days...

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Brad