As you may have read from the other page, I bought a Dave Grohl semi hollowbody guitar with the headstock broken off. Here’s my plan for it.
12/20/25 In the photo you can see it has a black bridge on the guitar. That’s my plan in a nutshell. I think it will be less involved than reworking the headstock onto the guitar, adding splines for reinforcement and all that jazz. This way, I can make a mounting sled (plate out of aluminum probably), drill some holes that line up with the mounting points for the Gibson bridge and tailpiece already in the guitar, get the sled mounted to the Guyker WT001 bridge. I’m sure I’ll figure all that out. In the meantime, I’ve mocked the sled and bridge up in CAD. On the sled I put the holes for the bridge and tailpiece screws in the correct spots, added registration marks so I can center the Guyker bridge and an arrow so I know what side is facing the neck.
There are mounting holes in the sled, this will be a 3D printed mockup so I can get all the dimensions correct before I have a a piece of aluminum cut by my friend who runs a machine shop. I’ve also approximated 3 holes in the bridge mockup, but I’m not sure where they are–I’m assuming there’s 3 holes and I won’t know until I have one in my hands. If you’re interested in a mockup WT001 Bridge for measuring you can download the STL file here, I used the diagram on the Amazon listing to make this 3D model. It doesn’t have the correct height steps worked in, but it dimensionally fits if you need it to make sure it fits for your project.
1/1/26
While I’m waiting for some parts to come in, I was able to cut off the end of the headstock (if you read the other page regarding this, I decided not to reattach the headstock and do the splines, etc., but rather go with a headless design, hence the Guyker WT001 bridge. I taped off the area and measured where a guitar hanger would fit, because it’s so hard to hang a headless guitar! If I left enough of a nub behind, the hanger would grab onto what’s left of the headstock and hang in my String Swing guitar hanger.
Something I’ve wanted to do for a while is incorporate the Japanese repair art of Kintsugi into my repairs. The repairer inserts gold into the crack of the broken piece and highlights the “repair as part of the history of an object, rather than something to disguise” according to Wikipedia. So that’s what I’ve done here using CA glue and gold leaf flakes.
1/12/26
So just to clear up a few things:
First off, some people won’t like what I’m doing. The purists. I’m sorry you feel that way, but it’s my guitar, not yours.
Second, regarding the headstock break and sawing it back off. Originally, the headstock was broken off and there wasn’t enough meat on the bone as it were so I could hang it from a wall-mounted guitar hanger. I had to glue the headstock back on, then cut it off. Without adding splines and a lot of finish work, this was the easiest way for me to stay within my comfort zone doing the work on the guitar.
Onto the progress!
After trying to get my 3D printer working correctly, I have stuck with making adapter plates from metal myself. My hope was to get a good 3D printed model made and send the specs to my friend who runs a machine shop, but the 3D prints keep failing. Me troubleshooting my 3D printer would fill a whole video and I don’t want to bore you.
So, after 5 different attempts, I’ve got a working adapter plate. After making a masking tape template for the post holes, I transferred that to the metal sheet. The first 2 plates I made were from 22 gauge aluminum sheet I bought at Lowe’s. As nice as this was to work with, it wasn’t thick enough and ended up bending when I mounted the headless bridge so I moved on to some steel from the scrap pile at work.
Since I was working with metal, I decided to tap the holes and use sheet metal screws to attach the bridge. I used a set of drill + taps from Harbor Freight and am very happy with them. I happen to have a bunch of 10-24 screws, so that was perfect because that was one of the sizes in the drill + tap set I got. I ended up buying some Allen-drive cap screws for mounting the bridge and also for the mounting holes in the adapter plate to the body. They fit much better because where the head meets the shaft is tapered and the tops of the heads are flat instead of domed so they don’t interfere with the saddle height on the bridge.
Honestly, I’ve been perplexed by getting the bridge’s location just right so I can intonate the guitar properly. Yes, I know if I take half the scale length of the guitar, in this case 24.75 inches (628.65 mm), that should be the distance from the 12th fret to the saddle on the guitar then extend the saddles out to their 1/2 way point. Well, it’s been very hard to approximate this with this adapter plate being in the mix. I have mounted many, many bridges on guitars and basses and have never had so much trouble with this. The most frustrating part is that I have to take the whole works off to make new holes.
Once I get the plate mounted and the bridge screwed on top, I’ll get the strings installed, try to intonate and if that doesn’t work, take everything apart. Why doesn’t intonation work? If the bridge is mounted too far forward or back past the 12 fret to the nut measurement, the guitar’s bridge saddles won’t line up properly to put the notes on the fretboard where they want to be. This is the scale length of the instrument.
For me, this is compounded by the strings being locked at the headstock and being inserted into the bridge’s tuning mechanism. On just about any other instrument where the strings are not locked at the end of the neck or in the bridge, you’ve got some movement. In my situation, I’ve got to take all that apart because I don’t want to drill and tap holes in the mounting plate with it on the guitar. The steps are:
- Measure and mark the new position
- Loosen the strings
- Take the strings out of the bridge
- Take off 3 saddles, to get to the bridge mounting screws
- Unscrew the bridge
- Unscrew the adapter plate screws
- Drill and tap new holes
- Remount the adapter plate
- Remount the bridge
- Reinstall the 3 saddles
- Restring
- Tune to pitch
- Intonate
Yeah, I know, first world problems.
If you buy from guyker.com, be sure to use coupon code TERRYGOYETTE for 12% off!
I’ve got some cool pickups coming from Guyker, so I can get those installed when they arrive. These won’t be the traditional humbucker pickups that Dave Grohl’s signature guitar comes with, I’ve decided to go with something different. Stay tuned!
1/13/26
Wiring, done. I laid all the components on a piece of cardboard and measured out how far they were from each other, so I wouldn’t try and put it all in and everything is too short. Tested it with a couple of temporary pickups. It’s a relief getting this done so easily. I’m amazed it worked the first time. I got the pickup rings in today. Just waiting on pickups but I’m going to get it installed in the guitar soon so I can just plop in the pickups and be done.
1/14/26
Wiring installed, also reconnected the ground wire from the bridge stud. I went with the TV Jones/Gretch-style wiring (master volume, volume for each pickup, master tone and 3 way switch), something different than stock 335 or Les Paul wiring. Hopefully with the black finish (powder coat?) on the bridge it will still conduct so the wiring doesn’t buzz from lack of a ground. I tested it with a multimeter and it looks good. Pickups are on American soil somewhere, so I’m thinking next week sometime.
1/21/26
I’ve been waiting for my pickups to arrive, they were shipped from China. When I started installing them yesterday, I ran into a few snags. The first one wasn’t a big deal. The TV-Jones-sized pickup rings I ordered from GuitarFetish were just a tad too small. Nothing a bit of sanding couldn’t handle.
The next issue was the biggie. While they included screws, springs and mounting plates, not all of the screws were correct. It should have come with 4 machine screws for each pickup, but came with 2 machine screws and 2 wood screws. The mounting plates are tapped, so the machine screws go right in. The wood screws however, do not. I found that out the hard way. At one point, I thought, “Oh, the inner screws are screwed into the body wood, and the outer screws are for raising and lowering the pickups within the cavity. Nope. All 4 screws should be screwed into the mounting plate, not into the wood. If they’re screwed into the wood, the pickups won’t be able to adjust up and down.
