Friday chuckle and question about early Stingray bridges

[zuma]

I just gave my early 80s "Charvel era" Stingray a nice little overhaul. My last step was fresh strings. Looking at my stash I decided to use a set of Coated Slinkys, .050, .070, .085, .105. I don't usually use those higher gauges up top. So there I am, with fresh strings installed. I played it for a couple of sessions and was sitting here thinking, "Wow, this is quite a bit stiffer. The action is... bad. I might have to remove these." I decide to give these strings a fair shot and play with the action. I get my tools, I'm about to insert my allen key, then I saw what happened (pic below). Ha ha ha! The strings had a mind of their own and decided a "straight path" was best.

But seriously.... does anyone make aftermarket saddles to "correct" this issue and give the strings a more direct path? My 1991 Stingray is the same. Did the non-mute bridges address this in later Stingrays? I don't own anything past 1991 so I'm just curious.

 

[zuma]

I take back my question about aftermarket saddles to "correct" this issue because that would of course screw up the string spacing.

 

[Rod Trussbroken]

The situation was remedied in 1992 with the above bridge. The string grooves were repositioned, from the center, to the left side of the saddles. At the same time, the bridge itself was repositioned slightly to the right In order to keep the strings centered over the pickup pole pieces. To current date, the grooves are positioned to the left of center.

 

[zuma]

Ahhhh, so my 1991 just missed the new bridge. Great info. Thank You!