Stop Tailpiece Replacement - Which material would you prefer?

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RWilke

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I am looking to replace the stock tailpiece on my Epiphone Les Paul Classic, considering either a Gotoh made of zinc, or another Gotoh made of aluminium, at a little more than double the price, both nickel plated.

Which one would you choose? Any pros and cons? Does the additional cost pay in some ways?

Thanks for any suggestions in advance.

Rüdiger
 
Are you expecting a tone change doing this ?

If there is one, it will be very small, microscopic, and only if you play extra clean. The moment you add ANY dirt to tour signal, there goes any hardware change advantage. Remember if you replace it, that you are at the same time replacing old strings, that will every time gives you a clearer, more defined tone.

I never felt I couldn't get better tone by just turning knobs.
 
BGood said:
Are you expecting a tone change doing this ?

If there is one, it will be very small, microscopic, and only if you play extra clean. The moment you add ANY dirt to tour signal, there goes any hardware change advantage. Remember if you replace it, that you are at the same time replacing old strings, that will every time gives you a clearer, more defined tone.

I never felt I couldn't get better tone by just turning knobs.
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Not necessarily a tone change that I am expecting, although I have read that different materials in the tailpiece may give more or less sustain. I will admit that the main reason for starting to consider doing this being cosmetic more or less. The first thing I did to this guitar after it arrived was to un-string it, re-string and do a wraparound this time, most likely just because I had read that Duane Allman swore by doing it like this. When I realised that wrapping around did not bring out my inner Duane also, and finding the whole thing kind of looking ugly, I undid it, but the wraparound left some nasty scratches on the top of the tailpiece. The second reason considering this being that I'm looking for something matching the Gotoh nickel bridge that I just recently got and installed, which definitely turned out being a major improvement over the stock hardware in terms of setup. Finally, I arrived at the specs I had been struggling to get in terms of string action. My high E string is now down to 1 mm, and my low E string down to 1.25 mm, without any buzz across the fretboard. Chalk this off for the Epiphone stock hardware being subpar or not, at least this has been my personal experience.

Anyway, thanks for your contribution so far, the main reason I posted this was to learn about the difference between a tailpiece made of zinc and a tailpiece made of aluminium in terms of overall quality, pros and cons or whatever, considering that the aluminium tailpiece costs twice as much.
 
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Every application that I’ve seen aluminum vs zinc used, the aluminum held up better and lasted longer in both firearms and guitars. The Gibson tailpieces are aluminum IIRC.
 
3bolt79 said:
Every application that I’ve seen aluminum vs zinc used, the aluminum held up better and lasted longer in both firearms and guitars. The Gibson tailpieces are aluminum IIRC.
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Thank you very much. This is what I wanted to be informed about. You are correct about Gibson using aluminium, as far as my reading up. So I guess that I will go with aluminium then.
 
ZAMAC, the name originates from the first letters of Z zinc , A Aluminum, MA Magnesium and C Copper.

Alloy ZA12:​

This alloy shows excellent cold die casting behavior and is used for all casting processes.​

This alloy is characterized by its excellent mechanical properties and low specific weight.​

But any high Aluminum Zamac alloy will work fine.
 
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