Tune-o-matic vs Roller

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Back in 2009, I described my frustration with the Tune-o-matic bridge on my Epiphone Riviera P93.  The retainer wire that holds the saddle screws in place is just a terrible design.   A good choice to address this issue is the Nashville style tune-o-matic which has individual saddle retainer clips, while also increasing saddle-adjustment range for intonation.  Another good possibility is a roller bridge, like the Wilkinson B33.   I figured the roller may pair well with the Bigsby, possibly improving the Bigsby vibrato’s general tuning instability.

In this video, I show how to swap in the Wilkinson bridge, and then do a series of comparisons to see if there’s any difference in the overall tone, sustain, and tuning stability with the two bridges. 

I recorded many many takes of the strum-tests comparing tone and sustain, and my results were always pretty inconsistent. Despite my best efforts, it’s impossible to produce the exact same string excitation for each strum. So, I think the variances in sustain and tone are largely insignificant- though it does appear that, across all my tests, the roller may have slightly longer sustain times. I imagine that if I replace the Epiphone bridge posts with the beefier Wilkinson posts there may be a greater sustain improvement, but I’ll leave that for another day.

The tuner I use during the tuning stability section is the excellent Planet Waves Tru-Strobe (PW-CT-11) tuner.  Update: this tuner doesn’t seem to be available anymore, but the Peterson Strobostomp looks like an excellent alternative.