About
“Conception of the TOWNER Down Tension Bar”
Conception of the TOWNER Down Tension Bar began back in 2007 I invested in a Gibson ES-335 without a BIGSBY vibrato tailpiece factory installed. The guitar was a good deal and at the time and I didn’t think I would really need or want a BIGSBY vibrato tailpiece. Well, it turns out I did want a BIGSBY vibrato tailpiece the more I played.
I began speaking with guitar technicians and the suggestion of putting the BIGSBY B3 on instead of the BIGSBY B7, to prevent drilling extra holes in the body of the guitar, came up often so I installed a BIGSBY B3 vibrato tailpiece.
After I installed the BIGSBY B3 vibrato tailpiece and began to playing the guitar, the strings would slip off the bridge because there wasn’t enough string tension between the bridge and the vibrato tailpiece. So, I began to think about how I could prevent the strings from slipping off the guitar bridge.
I came up with an idea to remedy the strings slipping off the guitar bridge by making use of the existing studs mounted in the guitar. Settling on the design you see at this website, it ended up providing more than one benefit to installing the TOWNER Down Tension Bar.
The TOWNER Down Tension Bar
- Mounts in place of of the stop tailpiece on existing studs.
- The studs allow you to set the break angle at the exact spot behind the saddles of the bridge to keep the strings in place.
- Alleviates the guitar owner from drilling any extra holes in the body of the guitar.