hansmoust said:
Even though the 'Cherry' finish looks great on that guitar, I don't think you would get as much out of that B-9 Bigsby as you would with the regular B-2 Bigsby on a Starfire III.
matsickma said:
Is that because of the neck angle and lack of tension rod?
The neck angle determines the height of the bridge and the height of the bridge determines the type of Bigsby that you can or should use.
The neck pitch may vary a little bit from one instrument to the next of the same model. The way the Studio 303 was designed it had a very shallow neck angle to begin with, so on most of the Studio 303s that I’ve seen, the downpressure behind the bridge was often just enough to keep the strings in place. The one in the photo utilizes a regular B-2 Guild Bigsby:
In the case of the Cherry finished Studio 303 there might not have been enough down pressure so it was necessary to use the B-9 type Bigsby.
The Bigsby with the tension bar behind the bridge (B-7 or B-9) is a lot less efficient when it comes down to the amount of energy/movement you need to put on the handle to get the required effect.
I suspect my playing style, although heavily dependent on a vibrato, is quite subtle- don't do dive bombs or twangeroos. Mostly subtle little pitch oscillations.
Just like you I’m a subtle vibrato user. My favorite vibrato would be similar to a traditional ‘classical’ vibrato; not a sideways ‘blues’ vibrato which always sounds a little too nervous to me. Just a slight pitch variation above and below the note is what I want to hear. On a guitar you can only do a classical style vibrato on the notes you’re fretting (unless you’re one of those players who likes to grab the neck and push and pull it back and forth), which is the reason why the vibrato tailpiece was invented in the first place. I mostly play fingerstyle (without a pick) and the Bigsby handle rests against the palm of my hand and I can grab it with my little finger. When I use the Bigsby my hand hardly moves and the position of my fingers stays about the same.
Now if I had to do that same thing with a B-7 (or B-9) Bigsby, my hand would move towards and away from the strings over such a long distance that picking the strings at the same time would be awkward.
As a matter of note I often loosen the Bigsby spring nut to soften the linkage between depression of the handle and the resulting pitch shift (i.e., can depress the handle a lot but only get a little pitch shifting).
I understand when you say that you only want a very subtle vibrato but choosing a set-up that requires that you have to put more energy into the up & down movement of the vibrato handle just to get less effect on the tension of the strings seems very inefficient to me. I would rather choose the Bigsby that allows me to control the amount of vibrato by moving it more subtle in order to get a subtle effect.
I am very satisfied with the Bigsby action on the SF5 (2 Guild HB1's) and SF4 (3-P90's). I switch between SF's and X170T's quite readily and haven't had a problem.
Obviously you can get used to everything and you simply adapt your playing style according to what you have to work with, but there’s so much more friction on the Bigsby with the tension bar than on the one without the bar that it will have an influence on what you can do with it.
matsickma said:
I just realized that the Bigsby on the red Studio 303 is for semihollow or solid body guitars. Is is possible the red 303 was a custom semihollow guitar? Any possibility that red guitar was not a hollowbody model?
Haven’t seen that particular guitar so I cannot tell you whether it is hollow or semi-hollow but I’ve seen two other cherry finished Studio models from the early ‘70s and they were both hollow.
And like I said at the beginning of this posting, the type of Bigsby (tension bar or not) is determined by the height of the bridge, not because it’s a solid, a semi-hollow or a hollow body guitar.
Sincerely,
Hans Moust
http://www.guitarsgalore.nl
