Has anyone replaced their Parker Fly Fishman Saddles with Graphtech Ghost?

LZRBeam said:
Yes, I changed them out in my 2004 model MOJO a while back. Happy to answer if I can.
Click to expand...

Thanks!

I picked up a 2007 Fly Deluxe with the "dogbone" saddles. Seller failed to disclose that one of the saddles has a problem and cuts out when I bend the string. Can't find another dogbone saddle, but I do have some of the ball bearing saddles and that might be a good replacement. Not sure though. When I opened the back, I found that the guitar had been rewired. The Fishman preamp was gone and there is a Ghost preamp there instead. Actually sounds quite good with the Fishman saddles, but since Parker parts seem to be getting hard to find, I picked up a set of the graph tech ghost saddles for it.

Obviously the ghost saddles with the long wires to the non-solder connectors are really different from the Fishmans with the short single wire. To change them out, I obviously have to de-solder the Fishman saddle wires from the underside of the bridge. Are there holes big enough in the bridge to feed the graph tech connectors?

Once I get the new saddles on the bridge and the wires to the cavity, it looks like I need a way to hook up the wires to the preamp. Right now it looks like there might a couple of wires from the bridge to the pots/switches (I didn't trace it yet). Is the best way to wire it up to get the summing board and the wire that goes from the summing board to the preamp? What about the wires currently running from the bridge? What about grounding the graph tech saddles?

Thanks for any help!
 
My situation was a little different, in that I had all original parker electronics. I just wired the new saddles to the summing board under the bridge. That required cutting off the push-on connectors and soldering the wires to the same points as the old ones. If I remember correctly, grounding was no problem since each saddle has it's own ground wire that I connected to the summing board ground. Here is a video that may be helpful for you.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDBwfdruw90

Hope that helps.
 
If you order the saddles directly from GraphTech you may be able to ask them to not fully assemble the connectors. The connectors are actually 3 parts, two metal connectors that the wires get soldered to and a plastic housing. Not sure if the holes are big enough for the wires with the housing, but it certainly should be without the housing. The metal contact connectors just push and snap into the housing.
 
i did the same on mine. the graph tech saddles actually sound a hell of a lot better than the fisherman ones, so it's worth the upgrade. the graph tech saddles have individual wires, but they all plug in to a summing block which plugs directly into the board. the only thing you need to remember to do is run an earth wire to the bottom of the trem and you will need to use a dremel to strip some of the black finish from inside the string channels, so that you get a good earth connection from the strings to the trem (the black finish is non-conductive). it was easy to do (i did it all myself) and it sounded terrific. i tone matched the piezo to a recording of a real acoustic on youtube and it was amazing. you may have to replace the jack plug socket as well, depending on which one you have installed already.

btw, i bought the saddles and the board separately

hit me up via pm and i'll send you links to all the parts if you need it. i have wiring diagrams as well.
 
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