Callaham Front Roller Upgrade Kit for Bigsby B5 und B7 - a short review

[Gino]

I’m still very much in love with my Hamer Newport that I got about 2 years ago. I even befriended myself with the Bigsby that I initially felt a bit awkward about. A set of Grover locking tuners and the magical Vibramate Stringspoiler helped... By now I’m really fond of the decent whammy action.

Nevertheless I felt that the Bigsby somehow hindered the full potential of the Newport. I also noticed a slight decrease in sustain and dynamics between the 12th and 15th fret - like “dead spots” - and a little research on the net told my that Bigsby vibratos may cause just that.

So I was rather curious when I discovered the following add on the Callaham website:

“All guitars equipped with a Bigsby B5 or B7 Vibrato suffer greatly from reduced frequency response and sustain because of the complete lack of quality of the front roller of the units. Our upgrade kits provides a solid, stainless steel front roller and axil that will widen the frequency response and sustain to where it should have always been. The roller is polished to a mirror finish and is grooved to maintain string alignment. This is a simple retrofit and pays huge dividends.”

Since I really like the Callaham stuff on my Tele and Strat, I went ahead and placed my order.
The Callaham part really looks solid (pic 4). The roller as well as the axis are made of solid stainless steel. There are grooves to guide the strings, which I think is a nice feature. The Callaham assembly is considerably heavier than the original part (58 gr. Vs. 31 gr.).
Assembly is easy. Just unmount the Bigsby, then there’s a little screw that holds the axle in place. Unscrew it and you can take the roller off. I had to drill the axis-seating to 5 mm because the Callaham axis is slightly bigger than the original. The original roller has quite a different build. Underneath a chrome-plated shell there’s a brass bushing. Doesn’t look as solid...(pics 1 to 3). Alright - reassembly, strings - here we go. So, what happened?
Even unplugged, I noticed a noticable increase of resonance! The entire instruments vibrates more. The same is true at the amp. And there is also an increase of dynamics and sustain - not dramatically so, but it's very tangible. And the “12th to 15th fret handicap” seems to have vanished.
I like it and I think the upgrade made a great guitar even better. Yepp, you can have a nice dinner for that amount of money (I payed considerably more than 42 bucks...), but I think it’s worthwhile.

[gtone]

I love what the Callaham steel did for my Firebird V. Really present and bell-like tones played clean, articulate and zero mud played dirty. Expensive hardware, but seems to be really worth it in some applications.