Paging Dr Freeman..... Paging Dr Freeman.....

[badpenguin]

Hey all, I was gifted a guitar today. (Yay!) It's an EKO Ranger 12 string (Awww...) And it suffers from the typical inexpensive 12 string issues. Lousy action, which is fixable thru truss rod and neck shim. (It's a bolt on.) and it suffers like most Italian's over the age of 40, with a case of Belly bloat. Yep, that's right, the lifting of the bridge due to the added tension of the 12 strings. Actually cracked the bridge, but that's an easy fix.

So Dr. Freeman, have you used the JLD Bridge Doctor, as advertised by Stew Mac? Think it's worth it?

 

https://www.stewmac.com/Luthier_Tool...ge_Doctor.html

 

And once my damnable internet is back up to speed... (mumble mumble...… freaking comcast bunch of...… ers…) I will post some pics of the new beastie.

 

[Freeman Keller]

I actually do have experience with the JLD Bridge Doctor. I have a wonderful old Martin 12 string that had developed a pretty bad belly and the action was really high. I thought that maybe if I could lower the belly I wouldn't have to have the neck reset and the JLD seemed worth trying. There are two models - one of them mounts to the bottom of the bridge plate with a screw thru the bridge, one of them uses funky brass pins that bolts it to the bridge plate - the strings pass thru holes in the "pins". I didn't want to drill any holes through the bridge of an old Martin so I got the kind with the pins.

 

[img2=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","src":"https:\/\/img2.stewmac.com\/product\/images\/23906\/w_65\/h_65\/JLD_Bridge_Doctor.jpg"}[/img2]

 

That image didn't import very well, go to the SM site and click thru the images. Mine was the one on the right, model 3695. Installed it, started tightening the compression rod and the belly came down a little bit. Not much and I'm sorry I didn't measure, but frankly it didn't do much good. But it effectively did two other things - it dramatically dampened the top vibration (duh, you've connect the the bridge to the butt block with a big wooden rod) and the break angle of the strings over the saddle was so low that those strings were on the verge of buzzing (look at the picture, I think you'll understand).

 

So, my experience was a total failure, I took the Doc out, had the neck reset and the bridgeplate replaced, the belly came down, the action is reasonable and the guitar plays like butter. The version that has the normal pins might have better break angle but it won't change the fact that you are preventing the top from rocking.

 

But, you say, Breedlove uses JLD's in their guitars and some of them sound pretty good. Here is a picture of the insides of a Breedlove

 

[img2=JSON]{"data-align":"none","data-size":"full","src":"http:\/\/www.frets.com\/FretsPages\/Musician\/Guitar\/XGallery\/XGalleryViews\/breedlove1.jpg"}[/img2]

 

and here is what Frank Ford says about it

 

That big thing hanging down is bolted to the bridge, and has a rod that just pushes lightly against the endblock. This unique arrangement completely eliminates the tendency of the bridge to "roll" forward under the string tension. This extra support is how Breedlove can get away with the radical scalloping of the main top braces without structural difficulties.

[DeepEnd]

I haven't tried it so take this with a very large grain of salt: Some people have good luck with them, others not so much. IIRC, fellow forumite kwakatak cracked the bridge on an old Takamine installing one. I've also seen reviews that swear by them. You've got an old, cheap guitar, not a vintage Martin so an extra hole in the bridge (for the screw mount #3694 version)) won't hurt anything. It might be worth a try.

[badpenguin]

Luckily, there are 3 screw holes for the bridge, so that doesn't bother me. AND the bridge is cracked anyway, so no real loss.

[Neal]

From Freeman’s post, it doesn’t look good. Those old Eko guitars were never “forever keepers” in a classic sense, just in a personal sense, so what the hell, give it a shot and make us smarter by your experience.

[Freeman Keller]

I assume that its a pinned bridge altho I know a lot of EKO's had tailpieces. I guess I might consider converting it to a tailpiece before I would put a Bridge Doc in it. A tailpiece changes the rotational upward torque to a vertical down force, plus it takes all the shear force off of the bridge. I also recall that some of them had the adjustable saddle insert - I would consider eliminating that.

 

Here is my tailpiece 12 string - a bit of a monster