cool, thanks Nevin.

_________________
you can save the world with your guitar one love song at a time it's just better, more fun, easier with a fender solid body electric guitar or electric bass guitar.

Well, there you go. Billy Gibbons told Joe B. that's the trick. What could anybody here add?

interesting. Is this method widely used? Only on LPs or any guitar with that style tailpiece?

On my Aria LP copy I have the strings wrapped over the tailpiece. I noticed, before wrapping them that the string angle over the bridge was really severe (I like my action kind of high) and the strings were resting against the rear edge of the bridge before going over the saddles. I never had any breakage problems but thought it might be a concern. Once I wrapped the strings, the angle over the bridge was much better.
Over the last 10 or so years of wrapping them there are small grooves in the tailpiece, but a new tailpiece is pretty easy to find if necessary.

_________________
Check out my new FB music page!

https://www.facebook.com/TheDevilandMe.Music

The main problem with setting your bridge/tailpiece that way is that you limit the amount of break angle you can achieve over the saddles.
You're better to just raise the tailpiece a bit.

When setting up a stop tail guitar I generally look to get a 190-197 degree angle along the strings as they angle to the stop tail.
You need a bit of a angle to keep a good solid break point. Just as you do at the nut end of the guitar.
You need to keep that break angle as shallow as possible to maintain good tuning stability. Just as you need a straight string path at the headstock end.

There is absolutely no good reason to screw the tailpiece down to the body top.

_________________
No no and no

+1

I used to top-wrap my "touring guitar" (one-owner '78 LP Standard) but when it went in for a refret in '99 the luthier explained the situation much the same way. I never top-wrapped again.

YMMV

Arjay

_________________
"Here's why reliability is job one: A great sounding amp that breaks down goes from being a favorite piece of gear to a useless piece of crap in less time than it takes to read this sentence." -- BRUCE ZINKY

Interesting...I never really even thought about the issue too much. I had seen it done on various guitars, and very much the same as when I was learning to play I just followed suit assuming it was an acceptable way to remedy the original issue of too much angle; I never gave it much thought. I never had any issues with tuning stability though; that guitar has always stayed in tune perfectly. It never gets used anymore though, I haven't played it once since I bought the Tele, and probably only three or four times since I bought my Schecter four years ago.
Interesting food for thought though, and I'm sure I'll try a different method of adjustment on the next stop tail-piece guitar I purchase.

_________________
Check out my new FB music page!

https://www.facebook.com/TheDevilandMe.Music

I wouldn't say that wrapping over the top was a bad way to set the guitar up. Just not as accurate and potentially detrimental to tuning stability.
After all you want the entire string to be as straight as possible (I've never fallen for the 'string through' spiel). Also the entire length of the string is under tension. Do you really want the taught string contacting sharp edges needlessly.

Without getting a tiny, fiddly angle measuring tool to the guitar. I raise the stop tail far too high. String the two E strings up. Then start lowering the stop tail till the E strings don't sitar on the bridge saddles.

_________________
No no and no

Interesting thread.... Thanks

_________________

+2 If you want tuning stability, don't top wrap.

_________________
Life...... It's sexually transmitted and always fatal

One has to sidestep the fact that celebrities are celebrities and consider them as 'private citizens'. Having said this, regardless of one's playing ability and more so, his/her celebrity status, one should consider the logic or lack thereof behind such things which players do to/with their instruments.

It is common knowledge that many do some mighty strange things to/with their instruments and proclaim it a boon. Here is where infamous, "Infallible Web Dogma" takes root, especially if a celebrity does it for even though it defies logic (and at the risk of being redundant), most of us know the rest.

In this particular situation, coupled by what has already been said, if this top wrapping nonsense was the way to go, Gibson would have continued it with a modernization of their early '50s trapeze bridge/tailpiece system which they abandoned in the late '50s for what we all know today. And in the case of their stop tailpiece/bridge combo, the results would be totally unacceptable then right up to now.

With every Gibson (et. al) having a Tunomatic type bridge and tailpiece, where custom string tension, appropriate break angle of the strings, etc. are concerned, this is why those studs which hold the tailpiece in place are adjustable and still used from the late '50s to now. All these other avant-garde modifications are chiefly placebo where essentially, someone simply wants to be different and proclaim same. This comes directly under the heading of, "If it ain't broke, then it must be fixed." Illogical? Of course.

YMMV.

_________________
You dig?

I've never considered top wrapping any of my stop tailpiece guitars,mainly for fear of damaging the chrome plating or especially the gold plating on my G-400 LP custom.The apparently small difference that it would make hardly seems worth damaging the plating for.I don't have any tension or tuning issues with my guitars anyway so if it ain't broke....

_________________
'65 Strat,65 Mustang,65 Jaguar,4 more Strats,3 vintage Vox guitars,5 Vox amps,'69 Bassman with a '68 2-15 Bassman cab,36 guitars total-15asst'd amps total,2 vintage '60s Hammond organs & a myriad of effects-with a few rare vintage ones.

I bought a goldtop P-90 Hamer that was strung over the top, and it was pulling the pegs out of the body. Needless to say, I changed it back to standard. Dumbass celebrities.