How to make "Overlord of Music" headless bridges (slightly) more usable!

[amillar]

Just to share a tech tip: many years ago I built a headless bass using one of these cheap headless bridges. As many others have found, they are almost unusable as they are incredibly hard work to tune, the design puts huge friction on the tuners. I've just dug that bass out again, and (fingers crossed) managed to make it considerably better by adding cheap thrust bearings from Amazon (other suppliers are available  ) : Kozelo F4-10M Thrust Ball Bearing 4mm x 10mm x 4mm, only cost me £6.79 for 5, and took literally a few minutes to fit. Remains to see how long it will last of course...

 

There's today's geeky post for you! Photo with bearing fitted to E string, middle strings as they were originally. 

Cheers,

 

Andy

 

[tauzero]

I was thinking of doing this to my Cort Space. Finished up putting copper washers in to replace the plastic ones which didn't make a lot of difference but this looks like a good alternative. Tension on a bass string is about 20kg (says D'Addario) which I assume means around 200N, and they're good up to 580N, so should survive.

[tauzero]

And I did do it to the Cort Space. An absolute revelation, the tuning action is now wonderfully smooth.

 

I used F4-10M bearings (4mm I/D, 10mm O/D, 4mm depth) from Ebay at £8 for ten.

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/387669381702?var=654905178691 - item has ended now but search for "thrust ball bearing f4-10m" including the description. Searching for "miniature thrust ball bearing" will also work but need some digging through.

[tauzero]

Seeing as I had ten bearings and used five on the Space, I had another five left over so I put them on the Hohner B2AV. Another improvement, this time on a licensed Steinberger bridge, so B2s and Jacks can be made better too.

[Stub Mandrel]

Decades ago I added thrust washers to my Hohner B2 🙂

 

Still get a bit of 'stiction'.

 

Thrust bearings would be ideal.