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Being a software engineer is a good way to burn off excess ability to imagine a better world.

2024.09.01 Breathing Exercise

Sep 1, 2024

Life is a breathing exercise

Yamaha SA-5 / SA-30 / SA-50 Bridge Dimensions

Apr 26, 2024

As I restore my Yamaha SA-5 guitar, I’ve been taking dimensions of some of the harder-to-find parts so that they can be more easily re-created by folks in similar situations. It’s hard to find these parts on auction sites, but you can 3d print a facsimile fairly easily or use the model as a reference for hand re-creation.

Today I made a CAD model and drawing of the base of the bridge. The bridge is a two-piece setup commonly found on archtop guitars, though the dimensions of this bridge are not common on modern guitars to my knowledge. This bridge is also pinned to the guitar with wood screws, which makes the dimensions particularly important.

Here’s a picture of the real bridge base with the adjustment screws + thumbwheel installed, as well as some dimensions from the CAD drawing. I recommend playing around with the 3d model in Onshape to get a feel for the various dimensions.

Yamaha SA-5 / SA-30 / SA-50 / SG-2 / SG-3 Tremolo Collet

Apr 14, 2024

I recently acquired a 1966 Yamaha SA-5. It can be hard to find parts for these guitars. In particular, the tremolo arm and collet always seem to be missing. Mine has the collet but was missing the tremolo arm.

I found that this 5mm push-in replacement tremolo arm is the proper dimensions, provided that the collet is well-adjusted.

I also made a CAD model and drawing of the dimensions of my collet, in case folks are motivated to make their own. I have zero experience with CAD drawings, but hopefully these dimensions will be sufficient information.

These videos are an excellent source of information about how these assemblies go together. In particular for the collet, it threads into the tremolo base and is held in place by a jam nut (threaded M8 x 0.75). The tremolo arm itself slides in and is caught by the bottom half of the collet (tightened slightly to keep it from passing through). The nut that holds the tremolo arm in place has an internal M8 x 0.75 thread, but has a draft/taper internally that causes the top half of the collet to tighten on the arm.