Metropoulos Forum

I am thinking about replacing my Nashville bridge on my Les Paul with an abr-1 style bridge. I have been doing some research on faber and callaham and am trying to decided which yields the best tone. Being that I am am an engineer, callaham seems to make a lot of sense and seem to be leaning in that direction. Has anyone owned both and can directly compare and contrast each?

Though I cant say about the abr-1,I can tell you about the Callaham tremelo. It is very accurate, steel-grade wise,to what it should be. I had a machinist do tests on several tremelo brands (on the sustain block). The Callaham is indeed 'cold rolled steel' which is actually quite soft steel, BUT, the Callaham is harder, denser (forget the exact terms my Machinist used) than say the Gotoh block, which he said was 'very cheap'.
Start with the Callaham, but later,get the faber. You will always 'wonder' until you try them both

What kind of posts are on your LP. I know a lot of people swear by putting in longer posts.

I have two vintage Love Rock LS Tokai from the '80 and both are equiped with Callaham's ABR-1 plus Stopbar, that I prefer to my originals Tokai's bridge so far.

My posts are the original gibson Nashville posts. I just outfitted the guitar with wcr cherry buckers. Huge difference from those so the next step is getting rid of the stock bridge. Ive decided to trick this guitar out.

I went with the Callaham. Good point to start there and try the Faber later.

You will not regret this choice. Just a little advice, it is better to get not slotted saddles because it will be more confortable to set up the spacement strings, which depends on each guitars.

I went with non slotted saddles. I plan on slotting them with the hammer tap method. The only thought I had is at some point I will probably replace the tailpiece either with callaham or faber. I don't think it will matter if I slot the bridge and then get the tailpiece, the nut slotting really determines where the strings fall on the saddles. I would think any variance in the tapiece would be negligible since the length from the bridge to the tailpiece is very short whereas the length from the nut to the bridge is long comparatively.