Review - Callaham Guitars Vintage S Model Strat Bridge and ABR-1 Gibson Bridge

Bill Callaham really knows tone. Having grown up with all sorts of great instruments with which to develop his ear (Lloyd Loar mandolins and '50s Gibsons and Fenders), he has built his business on helping others reproduce quality vintage tone. With a strong background in machining, a great ear, meticulous attention to detail and a Mechanical Engineering degree from Virginia Tech, Bill and his company, Callaham Guitars, have introduced an unrivaled level of quality to the vintage guitar repro market.

I recently purchased two of his bridges, one a Vintage S Model Strat bridge for my Eric Johnson Stratocaster and the other an ABR-1 bridge with vintage studs, which is a direct replacement for the ABR-1 Tune-o-matic bridge on my '07 VOS Gibson R9 Les Paul. At the time of this writing I have only installed the Vintage S Model on my Eric Johnson Strat, but have not yet installed the ABR-1. I have also previously purchased and installed a couple of Callaham Limited Production Narrow Strat bridges in two of my other guitars, so this is not my first experience with Bill's product.

The first thing you notice when you take one of Bill's bridges out of the box is how much it weighs and the quality of the craftsmanship. These are made from specific steel alloys that Callaham Guitars has found to produce the widest range of frequency response, increase the guitar's sustain and improve note separation when playing chords. I can attest to the fact that these Strat bridges have greatly improved the tone on all the guitars I have installed them on. Immediately after installation I can hear that the guitar is much louder when strummed acoustically, the tone is crisper and more focused and sustain is greatly improved. Plus, the superior machining and quality steel alloy makes for a much smoother mechanical action when using the tremolo and tuning stability is never an issue with one of Bill's bridges.

I can 't wait to get the ABR-1 on my R9 Les Paul and I will post a follow up once it is done. If the Callaham Strat bridges are any indication, then this will be a major upgrade in tone for my Les Paul. If you are looking for that single mod that takes your guitar from ordinary to extraordinary, I would suggest trying a Callaham bridge first before spending money on anything else.

New Guitar!! Eric Johnson Stratocaster

Even though the Eric Johnson Strat has been reviewed to death since its release in 2005, I simply couldn't resist doing another one on my new two-color sunburst. I've only had this guitar for a few weeks and it has quickly become one of my favorites, and if you've ever had a chance to play one you'll know exactly why I love this guitar. Eric Johnson Strats are beautifully built with deep, comfortable contours and a superbly shaped neck that is a real pleasure to play. We're talking high-end, Fender Custom Shop quality and attention to detail here for under two grand. You just can't beat that.

This is actually my second Eric Johnson Strat. I briefly owned a Candy Apple Red EJ Strat a couple of years ago, but never quite bonded with it. I was acquiring so many guitars during that period that it was difficult to connect with each and every one, so I am glad to have the chance to revisit this great Strat model and spend some quality time with it. The first thing I noticed (as I did with my previous one) was how stiff it played out of the box. Once I put on some fresh Ernie Ball Hybrid strings (.009s on the top and .010s on the bottom), added my treble bleed mod to the electronics, adjusted the truss rod to straighten out the neck, removed a spring, floated the tremolo and readjusted the action and intonation the guitar sounded much, much better and began to play like buttah. With a bit more tweaking (it still needs another truss rod adjustment and some serious playing time), it should break in beautifully and play even better.

I really like the sound of this Strat as compared to my others. I tend to pull out the pickups in just about any guitar I acquire and pop in my favorite replacements. For Stratocasters I typically go with DiMarzio Virtual Vintage Blues singles in the neck and middle position and the Fast Track II single coil sized humbucker in the bridge. This time, however, I am going to leave the EJ Strat electronics completely stock (save for, of course, my beloved treble bleed mod). This is my most "Strat-sounding" Strat at the moment and I am loving it! The Fender EJ pickups are a set of great sounding custom wound PUs made to Eric's exact specifications and are a bit lower in output than I am accustomed to. I am compensating for the lower output of the pickups by kicking in a little overdrive boost with my TS808 copy (when needed) and a healthy dose of compression from my Fuchs Royal Plush compressor pedal. Lately I have really enjoyed playing it through the clean channel of my Kingsley D32 amp with generous amounts of reverb, a touch of delay from my Boss DD-3 (a pedal I acquired when I first started playing guitar back in the '80s) and my Fuchs compressor. This guitar just oozes tone through the D32. What a great combo!

I love guitars finished in "thinskin" nitrocellulose lacquer. Apart from the improvement in tone I like the feel of nitro and the fact that nitrocellulose is a natural, organic lacquer (despite being a very environmentally unfriendly substance). These types of finishes also tend to age beautifully over time. I look forward to the wear marks and battle scars that mine will display in the years to come. It took several playing sessions before the neck finish "smoothed out" and stopped feeling quite so gummy and sticky. There is a small break-in period for nitro to smooth out and become more glassy to the touch, and I really love the feel of a nitro neck once this curing has taken place. Speaking of necks, the EJ Strat's one-piece, vintage-tinted quartersawn neck is a deliciously chunky, soft V profile with a very comfortably playable and bend-friendly 12" radius fitted with medium jumbo frets-- making fret work super smooth and easy. It puzzles me why Fender doesn't make more guitars with flatter radii like this. A flatter radius makes for a much easier set up and a more comfortable action; plus, the dreaded "fret out" issue is less likely to manifest itself when bending strings in the upper register.

One of the really cool, unique features of the EJ Strat is the lack of string trees on the headstock. Some people erroneously believe EJ Strats have slightly angled headstocks, or that the headstock is somehow cut differently in order to make it possible to remove the trees, but this is not the case. Fender actually designed split-shaft, Kluson style tuning machines that are dramatically staggered. "Staggered" tuning machines are simply machines with shafts that get progressively shorter and shorter from low to high, which provides the needed break angle behind the nut slot for proper coupling with string, therefore eliminating the need for the string trees-- even on the B and high E strings. Despite the stock bone nut (a great sounding, but notoriously bad material for tuning stability with tremolos), this guitar stays in tune quite well even with moderate to heavy tremolo use, and the lack of string trees certainly helps.

I have a Callaham bridge on order as I write this, and I can't wait to upgrade this guitar with it. A Callaham bridge is pretty much a mandatory modification for me these days whenever I get a Strat that I know I'll be keeping. The improvement in tuning stability, tone and feel is incredible and well documented on the Internet. If you've not head of Callaham Guitars, or if you have and are curious, check out the Callaham website. This guy makes the best Fender replacement parts in the business. I'll be sure to post a follow up once I get the tremolo installed. I can safely say that this is one of my all-time favorite guitars in the collection!

New Guitar!! Soloway Gosling

Yes, it is true. I have a guitar problem. I can't seem to get enough of them and all the new and exciting builders that are coming out of the woodwork these days aren't helping matters any. As I reported in my post on Soloway Guitars from the Nashville Amp Expo back in August, I ended up purchasing one of Jim Soloway's irresistible masterpieces. A gorgeous Gosling model donning a beautiful flamed redwood trans-burst top with Soloway-logo-inspired "f-hole"… once I saw it (and played it) I couldn't get my wallet out fast enough.

From what I've gathered, Jim's been at this for about 8 or 9 years now and he's developed quite a fine product in the process. Fusing the design aesthetic of the Stratocaster with his own unique lower bout shape, Jim has produced a truly stunning new take on the classic Strat shape that most new builders rarely achieve. His first model, the Swan, is a semi-hollow body construction and is made from choice tonewoods (alder or ash usually) with all sorts of different top options available (maple, koa, redwood, and others). What is unique about the Swan is its 27" scale length. Though its scale might suggest it is a baritone, these guitars are strung and tuned like normal guitars. Jim claims the intonation of a 27" scale length guitar is far more accurate and the lows are much tighter and more piano like.

The Gosling, on the other hand, is one of Jim's newest models and the first to offer the standard 25.5" scale length. The first thing I noticed when playing the Gosling I purchased, apart from the flawless fit and finish, was how great the neck feels. Jim calls this neck profile the ".915 Stubby". It starts at .915 at the first fret with a soft V shape and merges to 1.0 at the octave with a full C shape. Made of maple and topped with a Madagascar rosewood fingerboard fretted with stainless steel frets, bends and vibrato on this neck are effortless and super smooth… in part due to the extra fat profile giving your hand more leverage, and in part due to the ultra slinkiness of the stainless steel frets. Soloway necks are finished with a "thin skin" nitrocellulose satin finish, while the bodies are finished in what Jim describes as "the thinnest possible" coating of polyurethane. All Soloway necks are fitted with beautifully made bone nuts and gorgeous, hand-crafted truss rod covers with inlaid logo (mine is made from sycamore.)

Another thing you immediately notice is how light these guitars are. My Gosling weighs in at a feather-light 6.7 lbs! All of the guitars I demo'ed that day felt just as light. Jim is adamant about building light weight instruments after years of torturing his own lower back gigging heavy guitars. And despite the low weight, the timbre and sustain of these guitars is off the chart! Not even my heavy Les Pauls can keep up.

Jim uses great hardware on his guitars. My Gosling is fitted with a Hipshot fixed bridge with Strat-style bridge saddles, some cool modern metal knobs with rubber gaskets fitted on them for easy gripping and some awesome open-back (yes, open-back!) locking Hipshot tuners. The guitar feels solid and stays in tune beautifully.

Plugged into my favorite Kingsley ToneBaron boutique amp rig, the Gosling just blew me away. It is by far the clearest, most articulate guitar in my collection. While I was easily able to get all the basic rock, shred, jazz and blues tones from it I can definitely see this guitar becoming my main go-to instrument for fusion stuff. This particular build sports a DiMarzio 36th Anniversary PAF humbucker in the bridge position and a custom wound DiMarzio Firebird mini-humbucker in the neck (that was actually made for Jim by Larry DiMarzio himself). The electronics are wired with a 3-way selector switch, master volume and a push-pull tone pot that (when up) puts the pickups in series mode and (when down) puts them in the standard parallel mode. Pulling the push-pull knob up and engaging the series mode fattens up the tone so much that the bridge pickup practically sounds like a neck pickup. Couple this with the tone knob itself and different volume knob settings and a stunning plethora of sounds are available at your finger tips. With the Kingsley cranked under full distortion and the neck position in parallel mode with the volume rolled most of the way down, it was very easy to get a bright, Strat-like chime. There's almost nothing this guitar can't do!

So... fit and finish perfect, great sound, plays like buttah and looks stunning. I think I've found a keeper! If you are curious about Soloway guitars, go to the website and check out the gallery. If you're serious, you can contact Jim for a "test drive". I warn you, though-- if you try one you'll almost certainly be buying, so be prepared to spend your money before you try. :)