Hamer Sustain Block Saddles

[musicman]

There appears to be two sizes of saddles for the late seventies/early eighties sustain block Specials/Sunbursts - small and large.

Where can I find replacements for either?

Thanks

[BCR Greg]

I have lots, contact me.

greg at bcrmusic.com

[serial]

One of our more talented HFCers produces them (or at least did) and they were available through BCR Greg.

Another HFCer made some a little before that, but I don't know if he has any more of those.

Both were very nice quality and were to the 1979+ spec. Dont' know about the availability of the earlier style, but I think that the others will work on the '77-78 bridges.

[stonge]

There were basically two widths of sustainblock saddles - .375 inch wide and .400 inch wide. The easier way to tell which ones you have is to look at the high E/low E string alignment over the bridge pickup (original bridge Dimarzio on either a Sunburst or a Special); generally speaking if the high E and low E strings pass right over the polepieces the spacing is .375 with .375 wide saddles and if the high E and low E are outboard the polepieces the spacing is likely .400 with .400 wide saddles (If you have .375 wide saddles on .400 spacing, it looks like gaps in a picket fence and .400 wide saddles on .375 spacing tend to splay outward at an angle, but mismatches will generally work). I measured a few saddles and spacings when I built some repro bridges a couple years back. Hamer also used different suppliers, and I've seen some that were .385-ish wide as well. There are also cast saddles (you can see the porosity if you look at the flat sides very carefully - the chrome plate is thin and telegraphs the surface below), and on the earlier ones the string ramp is milled (you can see the tool marks) rather than a cast radius on the later saddles (my reproduction saddles were milled with a .093 ball end mill - talk about a tedious job). Pretty much all functionally equivalent, but if you want the cosmetics right try for a match to partial sets.

I bought some original Hamer cast saddles from an ex-Hamer dealer's stash pile - they are .375 wide and I sell them with original black oxide screws (height and intonation), aftermarket spring, and replacement stainless steel screws (because the originals tend to rust - use whichever ones you want but I include both sets) for $15 per saddle plus $3 shipping per order. If you need only one saddle, but want a full set of stainless steel screws I include the extras free (I hate non-matching hardware almost as much as hardware rusted into place. Rusted screws are a pain to remove too). Any questions - please email me at stongemonataoldotcom. Thanks.

[serial]

$15 per saddle is a great price for NOS original saddles. The Stonge (2FIG) bridges were/are of very high quality-I had one mounted on a Sunburst for years and only took it off because I found a year-correct one in nice shape.

[stonge]

Thanks, Steve.

The repro bridges/saddles that I built were completely milled out of brass bar stock on a 1950's Bridgeport milling machine (it had a 4 digit serial number - probably the only 4-digit that Peter would never want lol) in an unheated garage in February (ask me sometime about the wrong way to light a propane heater lol). My repro parts were .385 width on the saddles and .385 spacing on the baseplate (to split the difference on the ones I measured), but if I had scored those NOS saddles first I would have saved myself a ton of aggravation (milling saddles completely out of bar stock, drilling, tapping, and cutting the string feed ramp). I have a couple of extra baseplates for personal use, and the .375 NOS saddles on .385 repro spacing baseplates doesn't look too bad.

I dropped $3K on the sustainblock repro project between tooling and rebuilding that old Bridgeport, and the remaining repro bridges are to be forever enshrined in the hall of STUPID IDEAS - as I told mrs stonge 'if I ever get another smart-arse idea about building guitar parts, remind me of this, ok?' She saw the invoices

I taught her how to run the Bridgeport though, and she milled out a few of the baseplates. Couldn't get her to tap all those stupid little threaded holes in the saddles though... She saw how much fun I was having lol.