I've been ogling the products on Callaham's website for some time now and finally I took the plunge.
I bought the ABR-1 conversion for a Nashville bridge, a vintage telecaster bridge (which will find its way onto one of my many telecasters), and a vintage Stratocaster bridge for my 70's RI.
I expected the Gibson conversion to be a bit more involved than the Fender due to the Fender parts being screwed in and the Callaham ABR-1 bushings being 1 piece press in.
However, things aren't always as they seem.
I went online and say a nifty trick for removing the bushings from a Gibson involving a small screw in the bushing hole. However, I also saw some posts about people being able to pull the bushings by hand.
Deciding to test my strength, I attempted to pull the bushings out by hand with the stud screwed in almost all of the way.
Believe it or not, they came out. I'm not going to say it was easy, but I was able to remove them without any sort of mechanical assistance!
The new bushings came with a plastic sleeve that protects the threaded post of the bushing. I tapped the new bushings in with a plastic headed mallet. They went in easily and the new bridge was installed in a matter of moments.
At first I didn't really notice too much of a change in how the guitar felt. And then I started lowering the tailpiece which previously was up pretty high due to the wider Nashville bridge. That made a huge difference!
Now the guitar really just resonates in an amazing way!
While I was taking apart the Gibson, I also replaced the cheap locking strap buttons on it with some smaller Gibson style buttons. They aren't for gigging, but they will keep the strap on for recording and casual playing.
I expected things to go just as easily with the Strat. I had some big plans for it. I was going to replace the 70's style F tuners with modern vintage style tuners from Gotoh, replace the string tree with a modern roller string tree, and replace the entire bridge assembly with the new Callaham bridge.
The pickups had already been changed out for a set of Angeltone pickups and the nut is brass. Another thing on the list of things to do was to replace the electronics with the correct value pots. The current pots are 500k miniature pots. I'd like to install 250k pots, perhaps a .1 uf no load tone control, and MAYBE a varitone. Anyway, that is a bit further down the road.
I should have known things weren't going to go as planned when the new screws for the bridge were about 1/4 to 1/2" longer than the original screws. Sure I could use the original hardware, but that hardly seems like fun. Now I need to drill the holes a bit deeper into the body for the bridge mounting.
Additionally, when I went to install the replacement tuners, the old bushings didn't fit and the new bushings were too small. I ordered conversion bushings and am currently awaiting their arrival.
One thing that did work out really nicely is that I had a caliper handy to measure the bushing holes to verify their diameter as well as a screwdriver which conveniently had a 10mm shaft which made knocking out the current bushings super easy!
Now the waiting game, but at least I have a really great playing Gibson to keep me company!
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