This is my fully modded PRS SE277 Baritone. Hopefully this will give you some insight on how to mod a guitar and what it takes to install an Evertune Bridge. You may wonder “Why would you mod a guitar?” There are literally hundreds of reasons. In this specific instance I wanted a baritone guitar with Drop F Tuning (low as f&!#). I also wanted a very specific sound from my pickups (see Jari of Wintersun’s pickup shootout video, locking tuners and I’m a sucker for a satin black and gold guitar. Oh, and of course I wanted an Evertune bridge. I’ll talk about why I wanted an Evertune bridge later.
I had a pretty clear vision of what I wanted. The hardest part of the process is figuring out EXACTLY what you want. I found the closest guitar I could find. A Sweetwater Exclusive PRS SE in satin black. Pretty attractive as is but it wasn’t the exact guitar I wanted.
After buying the guitar I made some pretty basic mods.
Installed a set of Gold EMG 81/60’s. If you haven’t tried EMG pickups, they not only sound great, but the wiring is AMAZING!
Swapped the tuners to the D'Addario Auto-Trim Locking Tuning Machines.
Slapped on a new headstock decal. I bought this one from some Etsy page that doesn’t seem to exist anymore but there are similar Etsy stores that I’m sure could do it. I did have to use a brand new extremely sharp straight edge to make some very slight modifications to make it fit perfectly.
Then I hit up my tech about an Evertune install. You pretty much have to be certified to install an Evertune bridge. I would highly recommend NOT having just any tech install an Evertune Bridge. It’s such a major and permanent modification that any error will just ruin your guitar. You may as well just throw it away if you screw this up.
I wanted an Evertune bridge mainly because I hate anything that throws off my creativity when I’m writing or recording. I hate guitars that are out of tune, and I hate tuning between every take.
Here are some common questions I get about my Evertune bridge and hopefully crush some of the misinformation.
•Can you bend strings with an Evertune bridge?
Absolutely! Not only can you bend the strings but you can set how much you want the string to bend. You can also pick and choose which strings bend. For example; my guitar is tuned to drop F (F, C, F, Bb, D, G). I have F, C and F set up to not bend. Note that I can physically bend the sting but the sound does not tonally change. This is great because if you are pushing to hard or accidentally bend a note while playing a chord, you will not hear or record those mistakes. But Bb, D and G are set up for bending so while I still get many of the benefits of the Evertune bridge, I can still record!!
•Does the Evertune Bridge kill your tone?
Silly question. No way.
•Would you install an Evertune bridge on all your guitars?
Nope. I love the system for this guitar but I love other bridges for other reasons too. It’s sort of like asking if you’re put monster truck tires on all your cars. No way, just on the monster truck! Haha
There’s tons of information (and misinformation) about the Evertune bridge. The biggest problem is you have to know you want it because once you put it on, there’s no going back. That’s the main reason why I’m writing this! When I was thinking about doing it, I wanted a straight forward page like this to read. I hope it helps you make an informed decision!