Bridge Repair

[Billy Etheridge]

OK Ya Got Me,

 

I'm replacing the bridge on an Ovation Celebrity. When I removed the bridge I found it was glued on with super glue..... uh-oh. It pulled three small areas of the poly paint off, fortunately inside the area of the bridge footprint. I want to get a few experiences and opinions before I get started.

 

I have included two photos, one of the top and one of the bottom of the bridge. Any help will be greatly appreciated.

 

Thanks

 

   Billy Etheridge

 

 

[Jim Bancroft]

Might be a good candidate for an epoxy glue job.

Or, you could remove all the paint/finish, to bare wood, and glue the bridge back on with tite-bond or hot hide glue.

 

Jim 

[Paul Breen]

Clamp the bridge back on in the correct position and trace around it with a sharp exacto knife, scoring carefully through the finish. De-clamp the bridge and remove all of the finish inside of the line you scored. Clean up the back of the bridge and glue it back down, wood to wood with hot hide glue.

[Guitar Fixer]

  If you prefer to not see this guitar back on your bench with the same issue then score around the bridge through the unnecessarily thick poly and remove all the finish essentially inlaying the bridge onto the spruce then re-glue with epoxy, cleanup any squeeze out with iso alcohol. The trick to the whole job is not blowing out the visible finish outside the bridge area. 

   The problem here with these Asian Ovations is it's a pinless bridge and they are relying on a bridge to finish bond. Yikes.

Skip

[Pierre-Antoine Roiron]

Usually I scrap the finish and re-glue bare wood on bare wood too. Good results to this day.

[Mike Kolb]

Bolt that sucker down. We exhausted the topic of bridge bolts a couple of times on the forum, and this particular bridge looks like a prime candidate, being (1). a pinless design and (2). a less-than-perfect surface mating.  

On the philosophical side, it's an Ovation... and the Ovation engineers would leap with glee at the chance to stick a piece of metal or two anywhere they could, so a bolt-down wouldn't be out of the scope of their goofy designs.