Bridge saddle failure

[Roger2611]

I had the strangest gear failure last night, part way through the second set I noticed the E string getting louder and eventually buzzier, I had to tune it back up a couple of times...anyway on closer inspection at the end of the night the E string saddle was flat on the bass plate as both saddle screws had completely unwound....I could understand it if this were a new bass but it is a 10 year old Precision with 100's of gigs behind it and has never had this problem before.... I wonder what would suddenly cause something like that to happen?

New bridge on order today

[HowieBass]

This has never happened to me but I have heard of saddle adjustment height screws slowly shifting and apparently the trick is to put a drop of clear nail varnish/clear car lacquer onto/into the screw once you've set the height (locks it into place but not so tight that you couldn't break the seal for future adjustments).

[EMG456]

If the screws have just unscrewed you hardly need a new bridge. This has always been a problem with the old BBOT bridges, particularly those with the plain baseplate.

As you play, the saddles can move slightly side to side and this can cause the screws to undo.

As the previous poster says, nail varnish or if you want to be a bit engineerish about it, a little bit of Loctite will do the trick.

Cheers

Ed

[Jean-Luc Pickguard]

A fix I've used when this happened on a bass was to slightly flatten the thread of the offending grub screw with pliers.

[Number6]

I normally use a little Loctite Threadlock on the screws.....it never really hardens fully but keeps the set screws in position. All round useful stuff to keep in the cupboard for maintenance and repairs.