Tailpiece extender, Guild Starfire I

[Boneless]

So I have a Guild Starfire I. It has a Tune-o-matic style bridge and a tailpiece. It looks fabulous but it's a pain in the arse. More specifically, the tailpiece forces the ball-end in one fixed position and makes it very hard to mount the strings without them twisting and producing that awful chorus-y sound. Also, with certain strings (for example LaBella DTFs Extralight) there isn't enough tension to the top strings and they tend to vibrate, rattling and/or producing a weird fretless-like sound (and it gets picked up by the pickups, so it's not just OCD). My guitar tech added a sort of shim into the tailpiece to extend the top strings a bit and they don't rattle as much, they still do but a bit less than before. I'm thinking there must be some product on the market that addresses this kind of problem. So is there?

 

[96tbird]

Since the Starfird is set neck. You are limited in remedies. It all comes down to the tailpiece. There is not enough down angle as you say.

But first, string twist. This will be tedious; no quick string changes here. Get your new string nicely wrapped on the tuner, form nice witness points at the nut, same at the bridge. Then loosen the string enough that you can push the ball end out of the tailpiece so it can rotate and let any twisting out.

now about the break angle. Look at where the strings exit the tail. The strings (lateral plane) should at least be 90 to the vertical plane of the tailpiece ball end block. In otherwords, the tail has to be bent close enough to the body that it is adding to the break angle, and not lifting the strings. Bad explanation but do you follow?

So if your tail is actually lifting the strings because it is sitting too high, you should bend it closer to the body. CAREFULLY. Even if you bend it into negative angle, and the strings eventually pull it back up, it will never go past a 90 degree incidence. But if it’s currently a positive angle, the tail is too high, it will never pull down closer to the body.

Bad explanation but suffice to say that the plane of the flat wide area of the tail should be parallel to the string plane over to the saddles. If the tail is sitting high, your break angle will not be stable.

Beyond that, having the neck reset so the neck angle is tilted back is the only other option. Or raising action more than you want it to increase break angle.

A poor illustration of tailpiece angle.