Roller Bridge on Rimini 6

My Daughter damaged her Vintage VB 100 - the neck was beyond repair after falling over, fortunately the insurance covered much of the cost.

We got a beautiful Rimini 6 guitar, absolutely staggering to look at, as it bedded in though we notice the dreaded buzz that most guitars suffer with, tracing the fault it was the Tune-o-matic bridge.

I removed the bridge wire but it made little difference, the irony was her VB100 also had some bridge buzz from the Tune-o-matic.

Looking around I could see the solution was to invest in a bridge, a lot of people recommend roller bridges so I found one very cheap on Ebay that matched the dimensions, came with a saddle (which we didn't need) and some other hardware.

Removing the old bridge is just a case of loosen the strings and lifting it out, I realized then that the new bridge was not 100 match on the post holes, the old one was 8mm studs and the new one had 4mm studs, I didn't want to drill a new guitar and as the new bridge was only £11.99 I decided to manually expand the holes on it.

The plan was to get it to fit, see if it cures the buzz and if needed use this as a template to a more expensive bridge.

Anyway, I manually filed the holes (using a vernier caliper to help gauge how much to remove) and although I over filed a little here and there I pretty much got it right, the new bridge slotted on, I could adjust the azimuth and lock the two allen nuts then the bridge height needed setting, the existing bridge posts were still there so they can do that and finally the intonation for the string tuning.

Within 10 minutes of fitting this bridge the buzzing was gone, so it was just a case of adjusting the intonation etc.
The only thing I needed to do, because the roller bridge lifts the strings a little more aggressively I noticed a slight buzz from the saddle (as it had lifted a little), I cut a piece of neoprene about 1cm x 5 cm and slid it under, the slight buzz was gone from there.

Jim, her guitar teacher adjusted the intonation and its now sounding amazing.

I suppose Tune-o-matic are a choice, some will like them, some wont, its a shame it buzzes so badly as the quality of the Rimini 6 body is amazing, now though, even with a cheap set of strings on it's transformed, we'll get some Martin strings on in a week or two but already the effort in a couple of hours of filing to get this bridge to fit have proven themselves worthwhile.

The advantage of the roller bridge is you can lock everything, the bridge has two allen nuts to adjust it's azimuth then you can lock it to the bridge posts as tight as you want, then the strings can be adjusted individually and the adjustment locked, the saddles can be turned around if you can't get the intonation exactly right, there are two anchor holes, you can see in the pic that 3 are turned to face in one direction and 3 in another.

Even using a guess to file the slots bigger I found the strings lined up great, while I'm typing this Beth is hammering all sorts of tunes out on it and not a buzz in sight.

For the time being it's so good there's little point changing anything, if needed I'll use the one I've manually adjusted as a template to a replacement but it sounds so clear and crisp that it's staying on until we get to this stage.

Considering the small outlay I can't recommend the switch to roller bridge highly enough, even Jim was impressed with the bridge.

I got the kit from Streetwise guitars
http://stores.ebay.co.uk/streetwiseguitars?_trksid=p2047675.l2563

This is the kit I got

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/271517959751

We didn't need all the hardware but for the money I've no complaints, I'll rate this 10/10 - it's my own fault the bridge post holes were not exactly right but it's no biggie to get a file out and it's encouraging that the issue wasn't the guitar  body, neck etc but just a cheap bridge fitted in the factory.