WTB sustainblock bridge

[cornjulio]

What are the chances of finding a sustainblock bridge? Any ideas?

It's for a Shishkov, so it's for a good cause....

Anyone have one kicking around???

[scottcald]

@Bloozguy was working on doing some new ones a while back.  Not sure of status.  

 

[DaveX]

1 hour ago, scottcald said:

@Bloozguy was working on doing some new ones a while back.  Not sure of status.  

 

Over the last 18 months or so, at least three different members (you know who you are!) of the HFC have claimed to be producing or about to produce, Sustain Block Bridges but until now not one of them has come through!!, just a load of ego-stroking hot air, I must say that I am disapointed that no-one else has picked up on this point...

[Bloozguy]

1 minute ago, DaveX said:

Over the last 18 months or so, at least three different members (you know who you are!) of the HFC have claimed to be producing or about to produce, Sustain Block Bridges but until now not one of them has come through!!, just a load of ego-stroking hot air, I must say that I am disapointed that no-one else has picked up on this point...

Feel free to chip in towards the $500-$1000 out of pocket expenses for prototypes, polishing, plating and packaging before we even see a production unit...

[Bloozguy]

1 hour ago, scottcald said:

@Bloozguy was working on doing some new ones a while back.  Not sure of status.  

 

I have two machining vendors, two polishing vendors and two plating vendors ready to produce samples...as soon as I hand them over some money.

[DaveX]

21 minutes ago, Bloozguy said:

Feel free to chip in towards the $500-$1000 out of pocket expenses for prototypes, polishing, plating and packaging before we even see a production unit...

Your first post about this S.B.B. project was at the begining of December 2015 and this is the first time you have mentioned the fact that you don't have any money to pay for the basic costs of pre-production (I sent you a PM on Dec. 6th 2015, which you didn't even bother to reply to!) Why didn't you mention this fact before?, I'm sure there are enough interested HFCers that would be prepared to pay a deposit in advance in order to get the damn things made, but until now you haven't even given a rough idea about the per-unit cost despite quite a few people, including myself, asking! 

[Greg G]

OP, you may consider dropping BCR Greg a line

[mrjamiam]

44 minutes ago, DaveX said:

I'm sure there are enough interested HFCers that would be prepared to pay a deposit in advance in order to get the damn things made, but until now you haven't even given a rough idea about the per-unit cost despite quite a few people, including myself, asking! 

With all due slack cut to @Bloozguy and the other potential sustain block reproducers, this is something I've been on the lookout for, too, after signaling interest when the membership was polled.  I'd bet that most of us understand that the cost of a bridge can include a slice of the start-up costs.  You could pick a break-even point (maybe based on the number of responses to the interest-gauging posts), divide the start-up costs by that number, and add that to the costs of materials and production and whatever other per-unit costs are involved to yield a ballpark price.  It might be prudent to check for confirmation of continued interest at that price point before proceeding, but at least the ball would have been moved forward a bit.  (Yes, it's football season!)

[cynic]

I started the Tone to the Bone backplate project 5 or 6 years ago and haven't (and likely won't at this point) finish it.  Hey zorrow, how's that latest HFC CD coming? We're adults with lives that take priority over making (having made) parts for guitars where there's little to no room for profit if offering them at a reasonable cost.   

DaveX, if you're tired of waiting, ask for the drawings (they've been shared here before) and make your own.  Until you step up and try it yourself you've got little room to whine about not getting a bridge yet.  How many times during your unbearable wait have you reached out to Bloozguy to ask if he needed any help?  He's not a business you've contracted with, he's just a guy taking a step here and there as he has time to create something cool.

They'll get done with they get done, and we'll snatch them up and love them.

 

**For the record, I wasn't trying to call Zorrow out on the CD thing, but was just using that as one of many examples (along with my own) of the membership here forgiving transgressions and letting bygones be gone.

[Sugartune]

Ah, Cynic. Always the voice of reason. I wish you were my brain.

[cmatthes]

44 minutes ago, cynic said:

I started the Tone to the Bone backplate project 5 or 6 years ago and haven't (and likely won't at this point) finish it.  Hey zorrow, how's that latest HFC CD coming? We're adults with lives that take priority over making (having made) parts for guitars where there's little to no room for profit if offering them at a reasonable cost.   

DaveX, if you're tired of waiting, ask for the drawings (they've been shared here before) and make your own.  Until you step up and try it yourself you've got little room to whine about not getting a bridge yet.  How many times during your unbearable wait have you reached out to Bloozguy to ask if he needed any help?  He's not a business you've contracted with, he's just a guy taking aa step here and there as he has time to create something cool.

They'll get done with they get done, and we'll snatch them up and love them.

Exactly this.

[serial]

7 hours ago, Greg G said:

OP, you may consider dropping BCR Greg a line

Why?  

[cornjulio]

Obviously didn't mean to hurt any feelings here

Just wanted a wee sustainblock....

The good news is that the fantastic Mr Fung got in touch with me...

[Greg G]

3 hours ago, serial said:

Why?  

Thought he may be able to help.  Sorry.  Guess I'm out of the loop.

[hamerhead]

Greg used to have some that I did (maybe some of Stonge's, too?), but that's many moon ago.

As far as some of the horseshit comments (you know who you are!) above - unless you've done it, you have nooooo f***ing idea the process involved and need to STFU.

With all due respect, of course.

[Hamerica]

1 hour ago, hamerhead said:

Greg used to have some that I did (maybe some of Stonge's, too?), but that's many moon ago.

As far as some of the horseshit comments (you know who you are!) above - unless you've done it, you have nooooo f***ing idea the process involved and need to STFU.

With all due respect, of course.

^^^^^^^^

This and yes, one can never forget about the 2FIG bridge!

Hamerica

[bruce919]

does anyone have access to the plating specification used on the last run of Sustain blocks used by Hamer in the 2000's ?

[stonge]

1 hour ago, bruce919 said:

does anyone have access to the plating specification used on the last run of Sustain blocks used by Hamer in the 2000's

I didn't have the specs (everything I did was reversed engineered from three Hamer sustainblock bridges all of which were different lol) but my bridges were chrome plated by a local shop. The shop polished all the parts, and I think there was an initial plating layer (maybe copper?) between the raw brass and the chrome to help the chrome stick. The chrome is pretty thin (I'd guess a thousandth of an inch or two) because they chromed over some dings and dents they created while polishing. 21 base plates and 104 saddles cost me $536 total, and they dented up 3 or 4 base plates. I spent about $3K on the project without figuring any of my labor, and gave away more bridges than I sold (Wyldbill was the only one who bought one, so if the Pirate Special has an A string intonation screw that's lower than the rest of them that's a 2FIG lol). I did get to hand my dad a phantom custom sustainblock to check out, so he could at least see that I retained some of machinist training he told me to get.

Ask the local Harley guys where they get their bike parts chromed; those guys chrome everything.

[Bloozguy]

7 hours ago, bruce919 said:

does anyone have access to the plating specification used on the last run of Sustain blocks used by Hamer in the 2000's ?

I don't have it, but the platers I am working with will be putting together a specification for the parts I'm making. I'll send it to you when the get it done.

The most "showy" of the show chrome finishes are typically what they call "triple chrome" which is copper plating over the base metal, polishing the copper, nickel plating over the copper, polishing the nickel, and finally hexavalent or "hex" chrome plating. Hex chrome chemistry is the most toxic of all the types of chrome and therefore the most costly...but it is also the most brilliant silver color. Trivalent chrome is being offered as a replacement because it is far less toxic but it has a yellowish tinge and is nowhere near as nice looking as hex. The copper base isn't always necessary when the base metal is something soft and easily polished such as brass. So these bridges may just be nickel/chrome plated rather than copper/nickel/chrome. I will have a sample of each before I decide.

One last word on machine shops. I live in the Minneapolis/St. Paul area which is or was home to companies like 3M, Honeywell, Control Data, Unisys, etc. and now is home to many of the major medical products companies such as Medtronic, Boston Scientific and St. Jude Medical. Why does this matter? Because with a base of customers like that there is really no such thing as a "cheap" machine shop. Most of the shops I use have equipment that can hold tolerances of less than one micron (about 40 millionths of an inch) and cost half a million dollars a pop. Just as an example, the first quotation I received for 100 sustain block bases and 600 saddles worked out to be nearly $400 per bridge before polishing and plating. I sure wouldn't pay that for a sustain block and I don't think any of you would be likely to either. My target price has always been in the low to mid $200's.

[DaveX]

On 08/09/2016 at 1:57 AM, cynic said:

I started the Tone to the Bone backplate project 5 or 6 years ago and haven't (and likely won't at this point) finish it.  Hey zorrow, how's that latest HFC CD coming? We're adults with lives that take priority over making (having made) parts for guitars where there's little to no room for profit if offering them at a reasonable cost.   

DaveX, if you're tired of waiting, ask for the drawings (they've been shared here before) and make your own.  Until you step up and try it yourself you've got little room to whine about not getting a bridge yet.  How many times during your unbearable wait have you reached out to Bloozguy to ask if he needed any help?  He's not a business you've contracted with, he's just a guy taking a step here and there as he has time to create something cool.

They'll get done with they get done, and we'll snatch them up and love them.

 

**For the record, I wasn't trying to call Zorrow out on the CD thing, but was just using that as one of many examples (along with my own) of the membership here forgiving transgressions and letting bygones be gone.

OK, point taken! Does anyone have the drawings/specifications that they are prepared to share so that I can get them made myself? Here in Germany there are still lots of small metal workshops where such projects can be realized at a reasonable cost! Please send me a PM if you can help, Thanks

[HamerHamburg]

4 hours ago, DaveX said:

OK, point taken! Does anyone have the drawings/specifications that they are prepared to share so that I can get them made myself? Here in Germany there are still lots of small metal workshops where such projects can be realized at a reasonable cost! Please send me a PM if you can help, Thanks

Maybe God can send you one - afterall he did send you a Sunburst ...

[DaveX]

36 minutes ago, HamerHamburg said:

Maybe God can send you one - afterall he did send you a Sunburst ...

Hi Todde, didn't you hear, God is dead...

[HamStd]

DaveX,  please email me at Hamstd@gmail.com.  I might be able to help.  

Peter

[Caddie]

buy an old beat up Hamer with a sustain block bridge, strip it out and use it on your current project.  then refurb the old beat up Hamer and put in whatever kind of bridge you want   Cheers!

caddie

[Caddie]

34 minutes ago, HamStd said:

DaveX,  please email me at Hamstd@gmail.com.  I might be able to help.  

Peter

wtf, another newbie gets invited to see the Great and Powerfull hamstd?   I don't care if he is from Hamburg!  Back of the line for you Mr 34 Posts Noob. 

caddie