Does anyone have any clever techniques for mounting a hipshot triple lock down bridge? I'm trying to figure out the best way to cut out the cavity for the hump on the bottom. I could make a template for it, but I don't have a template following bit small enough, and they seem difficult to find, and are generally way too long. I've had some luck on other stuff just waxing the inside edge of my mdf templates with a chunk of candle wax and riding the quarter inch shaft of a quarter inch bit along it. The wax seems sufficient to keep it from burning if I keep moving. Only problem is that I can only do fairly deep cuts that way, which isn't needed here. It would work, but I think there must be a better/easier way.

Any tips?

-Nick

How about putting a wooden spacer between the template and the bass?

Or you could just stack up plexi templates to get the right depth.
The installation of those bridges are quite a pain the butt huh? :)
I mean the bridge is great once installed, it's just a very unfriendly setup compared to other solutions out there. Well at least it was more time than I really wanted to spend putting 6 of them on. I ended up using my drill press to rough it out with the through hole and the little long oval inlay.
Best of luck to you,
Dirk

How about putting a wooden spacer between the template and the bass?

Yeah, that was my first thought, but getting it aligned accurately is difficult.

right now I'm leaning towards just doing it with a few passes of a 1/2" forstner bit. It's a touch bigger than the width of the oval section, so it'll be a bit loose, but I can get the bolt dead on, so the screw and bolt can keep it in position. 1/2" is still small enough that the body of the bridge will cover it, and should be big enough that I can do it in a reasonable number of drill points.

I think in the future, I'll stick to the ebay knock-offs that are just held by 2 screws. They're WAY cheaper, and I don't care about the through body stringing.

And most importantly for me, they're way easier so there's a lot lower chance of screwing something up.

-Nick

I made a template with four ovals and used a 3/8" router bit I got from Stew-Mac. I'm not a fan of these bridges. They're just too much of a hassle to install and I don't think they add anything that couldn't be achieved with a regular string-thru bridge, unless you're using them on a fanned-fret bass and gots to have string thru...then there's the whole "how are you going to ground these single saddle bridges?" thing. Easy enough to ground one rail if you use a brass nut, but what if you want to use a bone or a graphite nut?

Yep, it's fanned fret.
I just bought them because it's the only ones warmoth had, and i didn't do enough research beforehand. I couldn't care less about string through, and it looks like it would kink the strings pretty badly anyways.

I'm just going to route in an aluminum plate on the back side and ground through that.

not a big deal, but it's silly that I even have to worry about it. It wouldn't need that many threads for strength. They could have just left the bass plate a tad thicker and left the bottom of the bridge flat.

-Nick

Return them to Warmoth and buy off of eBay? ;)