Joes guitars help

I started doing it because it reduces the angle that the strings go over the saddles. It means that I break less strings and, probably subconsiously, it feels slightly easier to bend the strings. The problem that I've found with doing this is that you end up with end of the string at the ball end have the last wound bit right where the string bends round the tail bar. One day I'm going to get on the lathe and machine up 6 little brass spacers to get all the wound part of the string fully into the tail bar.

Anyway, next time you restring give it a go. It'll either work for you or it won't.

I don't like raising the tail bar because it rattles around. If you turned a pair of spacers up to use as large washers then that'd work better. I prefer having as many threads as I can in the guitar though. Anything like that will help transmit the good vibrations to the guitar. The guitar needs to pick up good vibrations.    Seriously though, I quite like the position of the tail bar. PRS came up with a reasonable compromise with their tail bar and has its bridge built in but then obviously you lose the ability to set the intonation for each string individually. Actually I've never looked to see how they get round the wound string issue. Presumably the holes in the tail bar aren't as deep. I'll look next time I'm in a shop.

Thanks for the info Pete. That explains that. I'd be interested to know how people get round the winding issue though. We can't be the only people to have noticed (can we?).

Thanks for the link. There's quite a lot of information there! According to that it is to make the strings feel lighter, which I suppose mirrors my string bending comment. I tried 11s on my last string change and hated them though, so obviously it doesn't work for me.