Lightning Bolt

Top wrap v Tune-O-Matic guitar bridges: You can get into a mess of trouble here. There’s a perception that the intonation flexibility of the old-style lightning bolt design is inferior to that of bridges with individual or partial string adjustment screws, such as the Tune-o-matic. I’ve been wrestling with this somewhat idealistic theory for a while, but I’ve finally come down off the fence.I’ve been experimenting with an LP Junior and an SG Junior, trying different wraparound bridges but always finding them troublesome. Often, they simply don’t go low enough, and actual intonation accuracy isn’t really possible. It’s fiddly, without delivering consistent results.So I’ve reverted to the old-school lightning bolt design, named after the zigzag intonation pattern cast into the bridge itself. Unlike a Tune-o-matic, where individual saddles can be adjusted to alter the length of each string, the lightning bolt has a fixed compensation pattern. String length is adjusted only by rotating…