69 Hummingbird w/ strange bridge plugs

[David Edward Helmer]

Working on a 69 Hummingbird, in for a bridge reglue. I'm scratching my head a bit as to why someone did this at some point? any thoughts? anyone see anything like this before? strange.

Im gonna trim em off flush and plug the holes on the bottom of the bridge so the next person doesn't fight it, along with trimming the finish for a better glue up.

[Len Biglin]

 it might have had metal anchors there to support the adjustable saddle , and someone replaced them with dowels ?

[Paul Breen]

Len is correct. This model would originally have had an adjustable saddle get up on it. The location of the holes is consistent with the saddle adjuster screw locations.

[David Edward Helmer]

Yep its an adjustable saddle. It has the LR Baggs Anthem system. Maybe they did this when they installed the piezo? who knows. The holes in the plugs have threads for the saddle height scews, im just gonna hit those with some CA to harden the threads up. I used Frank's trick of supergluing a plug on the end of a dowel and put a chisel in a vise using the drill press as a lathe, worked great! from here out 'im just gonna fit it. here some picks of the progress. cheers yall 

[Walter W Wright]

yep, that was to replace the big heavy metal bushings under there.

kinda surprised that whoever did all that didn't finish the job and lose the tone-sucking adjustable saddle entirely for a normally fit saddle slot.

also very curious how the saddle pickup is supposed to work in there, it needs an actual flat saddle slot bottom to rest on.

[David Edward Helmer]

The repair that was done in the past is a curious one. The saddle adjustment is all the way down. Whoever installed the pick up system put a shim under the piezo and its coming through just fine when used. The saddle looks like a replacement to me, customer likes it. Finished this up last week. Came out nice. Love the group here. Thanks y'all!

[Walter W Wright]

ceramic saddle!

i remember the first time i encountered one of those, i took this oddly heavy bone saddle to the belt sander to tweak the profile a little and what the hell, nothing's happening??

where you trimmed out the top finish for a proper full-surface bridge glue joint, what's with the scoring in the zones to be removed? does that make the finish easier to chip off?

[David Edward Helmer]

Yep the scoring helps get a clean line. Little pieces, a little at a time. I also scored a line down the center of the marks too, for smaller pieces to break away.