lowest strings action

just curious, how low can you go with kahler, i talk about string action here.. i love my strings action pretty low, and i hope i can keep it that way if i get a kahler tremolo..

Ive seen many people dis on kahlers because of poor performance.

Ive also seen many poorly installed. With all the parts and the roller bridges, the whole bridge sits pretty high as far as bass bridges go. Some basses playing plane natrually sits pretty high so a top flatmount is fine. If not, if the base of the kahler is flatmounted to the top of the bass, the action is too high. The rear facing saddle rollers can only be dropped so far before the string starts buzzing on the manifolds. Yuk.

Ive seen solutions like, "this sucks" and now they just have a bass body with a pocket in it and a kahler on ebay or a crappy playing bass in a pawn shop (they give up), a bass with horrible action (yuk), or they shim the neck up 1/8" to raise the playing plane up to where the bridge saddles are at a better, non buzzing angle (yuk).

I dont know why its viewed as such a difficult thing. I mean, I gotta rout out the pocket for the mechanical motion anyway. Why not do a little more routing and drop the area where the base mounts to the top 1/8" or so. The base of the kahler is mounted below the top of the bass. Then the saddle manifolds have a greater angle to avoid string buzz on them and the action can be set as low as the setup will allow.

Its a lot harder to explain than it is. Ill post some pictures later.

I like my action a little high but I've seen people get down to a few millimeters with a properly installed Kahler on a bass with a good straight neck.

madmike wrote:

I dont know why its viewed as such a difficult thing. I mean, I gotta rout out the pocket for the mechanical motion anyway. Why not do a little more routing and drop the area where the base mounts to the top 1/8" or so. The base of the kahler is mounted below the top of the bass. Then the saddle manifolds have a greater angle to avoid string buzz on them and the action can be set as low as the setup will allow.

Its a lot harder to explain than it is. Ill post some pictures later.

so you had to countersunk the whole kahler bridge ?

bootsox wrote:

but I've seen people get down to a few millimeters with a properly installed Kahler on a bass with a good straight neck.

that's what I'm looking for, a low action for kahler..

SPYD3R #9 wrote:

madmike wrote:

I dont know why its viewed as such a difficult thing. I mean, I gotta rout out the pocket for the mechanical motion anyway. Why not do a little more routing and drop the area where the base mounts to the top 1/8" or so. The base of the kahler is mounted below the top of the bass. Then the saddle manifolds have a greater angle to avoid string buzz on them and the action can be set as low as the setup will allow.

Its a lot harder to explain than it is. Ill post some pictures later.

so you had to countersunk the whole kahler bridge ?.

Exactly. Remember, that bass wasnt designed to have that on there.

Now, bodies that I build, I still do the base countersink and low neck pocket so the strings are closer to the body and the pickups dont need to stick up as high.

mike is correct, only under very rare circumstances will a kahler flat mount and provide very low spacing without the saddles being "flattened out to compensate"
( my Charvels )

this is the second install i did ... and played this bass to death. its sittin up in the rafters right now waiting for me to figure out something to do with the body. you can see i did a whole lot more routing than just the kahler recess and pocket ......



this is the rout in the new scratch build carvin v440 ... its almost done! who can tell me whats wrong with this picture?



this is the 3rd install i did on my PXR custom build. its a neck thru so i had to be exact with the depth because the frets and neck are where they are ... came out nice and i play this bass all the time.



these are shots of the rearward facing bridge saddles with the manifold part in front of the roller. notice there is about a 35 degree angle on them to keep the string from buzzing on it. its about getting the angle up so it doesnt buzz at a spot where the action is good. if i flat mounted this, the angle wouldnt be as sharp and the string would buzz on the manifold trying to get my action down. actually, with a flat mount, trying to get the action even close i would put the saddle down as far as it would go and the action would still be high.




omg, look how dusty my nice bass is!

you'll notice when you get a kahler with a template, the template is an interior shape the size of the pocket and an exterior shape the size of the kahler base ... the exterior shape is for the recess. its not all that much more work doing this correctly. its a rout thats usually less than 1/8".

now ... heres what happens.

a bassist goes to a local shop and asks if their "luthier" would install a kahler on their bass. most, not willing to turn away work say yes, and do a half butt job and dont mess around with countersinking and setting this up right because your a "silly bassist" and "what the heck would you want a trem on a bass for?" you get your bass back with strings buzzing on the manifolds, really high action, the neck shimmed and generally just playing like poop. .... generally speaking. i'm sure there are luthiers out there who will do it correctly ... but i've seen some nightmares.

madmike wrote:

this is the rout in the new scratch build carvin v440 ... its almost done! who can tell me whats wrong with this picture?

the humbucker rout is upside down, right?

madmike wrote:

now ... heres what happens.

a bassist goes to a local shop and asks if their "luthier" would install a kahler on their bass. most, not willing to turn away work say yes, and do a half butt job and dont mess around with countersinking and setting this up right because your a "silly bassist" and "what the heck would you want a trem on a bass for?" you get your bass back with strings buzzing on the manifolds, really high action, the neck shimmed and generally just playing like poop. ....

that's exactly what i'm worried about.. and thanks heaven I found this forum..

Ding ding ... correct answer.

If it was one mm ide be poed ... Or fix it.

Because its two mm's in a hh config, I didnt like all the screws on the top; my thumb goes there. I did it sub conciously until I dropped one in the rout and said, "woops! Upsidedown." Thats ok ... makes it mine and original.

I didn't know they would wind each coil for the specific string and it would matter

amimbari wrote:

I didn't know they would wind each coil for the specific string and it would matter

They dont ... They arent that precise specific. Wonder if there are pickups that are. The only top bottom specific downside is where the leads come out of the pickup cover (i addressed that) and some cork sniffer looking down there nose at it and saying, "doo doo doo, your pickups doo, doo, doo.."

I was actually gonna say that you "just barely" had enough room for the 7410 on the backside and that would lead to wood chipping in it's future, but since you were talking about the pickup.. I didn't.

it actually lined up flush with the back of the base of the kahler so no probosis of wood sticking up unprotected .......

but yeah ... that was another mis-measurement ... i still dont know how i came up with that. i really wanted the bass to be another 1/2" longer in the tail.

but this is why i do this stuff ... so i learn. if i didnt make any mistakes ... eh ... i dunno what. would they give me an award? would my social status match my ego? would i be the best bass player? ...

i wouldnt have to go to guitar center and buy another bass! yeah, thats it.

geeze ... i just bought that sg from them. ha!

they really loved all the basses i traded in. a lot of those cats never saw a kahler recessed (back to the thread topic) like the way i do ... in other words, they have probably seen them done incorrectly. (altho they didnt let me trade in that bass ... it doesnt say "gibson", "fender" or "ibanez" on it. thats ok; kinda wanted to keep it.) the tech on hand even looked at it and said ... "oh ... that makes a lot of sense!"

right?

and oh ... an update. i did trade the washburn bantam in. i wanted to buy it to try out a different bass trem. after doing 3 set ups and breaking 4 strings, i'm glad its gone. it just really wasnt as good a design as a kahler. i wonder if i can chalk that up as another luthier making a half butt effort to cater to bass players with silly ideas and not really caring about the result. maybe i just got a bumm one.

still gotta try the steinberger transtrem and a jens ritter design trems.

ya it makes sense. I got nothing but string rattle if I made the saddles almost flat on my black unit that had the 2410 on it.