Background of Danelectro reissue 12 string bridges.
Evets Corp. / Danelectro designed and built the 1998-2003 Reissue guitars almost identical to Danelectro masonite guitars manufactured between 1957 and 1965. Evets planned to manufacture a surplus of parts to market bubble-wrapped as retrofit replacement parts for their reissue guitars and thus for vintage Danelecgtro guitars, ...and advertised that plan to jobbers and dealers, ...and had just begun those parts distribution when Evets ceased production of Danelectro guitars in 2003. With unofficial help from Evets sales Reps, word soon got around that the reissue parts would retrofit as replacement parts for vintage Danelctro guitars. Since no other intoneable bridge would retrofit onto vintage Danelectro guitars, ...Danelectro enthusiasts were delighted by the intonation tuneable 6-string bridge Danelectro introduced in 2000 that fit right onto vintage Danelectro guitars. 12-string guitars with intoneable bridges followed soon after. Unwittingly, many people (including me) understood that the 12 string bridge would also undestructively retrofit onto vintage 12 strings; But as I have now discovered, ...it won't without mods.
When I spoke to my parts supplier (on several occasions over the last several years), they erroneously (and surely innocently) intimated that the Danelectro 12-string intoneable bridges would retrofit onto vintage Danelectro guitars. After recently ordering a 12-string reissue bridge to retrofit onto this project's Danelectro Scorpion, I have discovered that the Reissue 12 string bridges would require destrutive modifications to a vintage Danelectro guitar for those bridges to work as configured from the factory; (see "Task History" and "Options"). But it's an understandable mistake on the salesmens' part since unless a person looked very closely at the mounting screws scheme under the many small parts of the Reissue 12 string guitar bridges, and actually measured the mounting and saddles reach against the vintage guitars' scale length, it would be easy to think the 12 string bridges would retrofit vintage 12 string guitars (they will retrofit if a person desires to drill new mounting holes and string-thru-body holes in a vintage instrument). Original vintage Danelectro guitars do not have a string-thru-body scheme but root the string ball ends at the rear of the bridge plate and use the same straight, fixed, rosewood bridge saddle for their 12 strings as for their 6 string guitars.
Another erroneous distraction in thinking the reissue bridge would retrofit, is that a string-thru-body bridge design doesn't neccessarily mean the bridge will not work in a purely bridge-rooted strings configuration; A good example being modern Telecaster bridges that afford both string-thru-body and bridge string rooting. But not so with Danelectro's new 12 string bridge.
This project's webpages provide details of considerations for non-destructively installing a new reissue 12 string tuneamatic bridge onto a Vintage Danelectro, ....OR NOT, ......AND the best alternatives I can find to do that. |