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I'm going to give the younger members of the Mod Squad a rest this month, and detail a job I did myself—one that harkens back to one of the first electric-guitar mod I ever attempted. Way back in the 1960s, I over-hauled and fine-tuned the bridge saddles on the '58 Strat, because the sharp edges of the height-adjusting screws protruding above the saddles hurt my picking hand. I didn't have many tools at the time, but I did have a Dremel Moto-Tool and its router base accessory—my first "big" investment in tools. Today, my Moto tool looks different, but it does the same job. And in this case, the job involved a '63 Strat with the same problem I experienced 40 or so years ago.
 As you can see, all the screws protrude above the saddle tops. I decided to grind off enough metal from the bottom of each screw so that the tops will be slightly below the saddles when the bridge-saddle radius is perfectly adjusted.
 The look I wanted is shown by these replacement saddles. Fender offers saddle screws in four lengths—1/4", 5/16", 3/8", and 1/2"—and the guitar's neck angle, bridge-saddle height, and neck-pocket depth determines which height-adjusting screws will work best. Most often, a Strat needs 1/4" screws for both E-string saddles, 5/16" screws for the A- and B-string saddles, and 3/8" screws for the D and G saddles (although, quite often, the D and G saddles use the same size as the A and B strings).
 I threaded each screw into a Graph Tech saddle, and adjusted them with a modified Allen wrench (the short "L" was clipped off so I could insert the straight part into a dowel to allow easier turning) to expose just the amount of screw I wanted to remove with my fine-cut mill file.
 I used my Dremel tool to bevel each screw slightly to ensure solid contact with the Strat vibrato's metal base plate. (A flat-bottomed screw usually teeters on a single edge.) I affixed the Dremel's router base to a piece of scrap wood, and turned the screws clockwise and counter-clockwise against the spinning grindstone. The Graph Tech saddle—held by my modded Allen wrench—made a perfect holding device for this operation.
 I maintained the correct action by adjusting the screws until all the strings just touched the underside of my radius gauge. Voila! No sharp ends.
Originally printed in July 2006 issue of Guitar Player.
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