Has anyone else had this happen? One of my hooks snapped so I started hooking that string to the adjacent post and now that one has snapped. I guess I have to replace the tailpiece now. Is that a big deal?
Tailpiece hooks snapping
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Wow! I’ve never seen that before. Replacing it isn’t really that big of a deal. Here’s a video that walks you through the process.
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I’ve also never had that happen. I replaced the tailpiece on my Kentucky KM-1050 with a James tailpiece. It was pretty straight forward, but I did have to drill deeper holes into the support block inside the mandolin, because the screws for the James tailpiece were longer.
It looks like an Eastman? I would give the manufacturer a call. It is definitely a defect, and I’d expect them to send you a new tailpiece.
Also, having the other strings on the adjacent piece is going to put all their tension onto that one, so I’d expect it to snap soon, too.
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I am guessing you’ve knocked it at some point without realising and it has weakened the hooks. Then tension on the string has finished the job.
Fitting a new tailpiece shouldn’t be too difficult.
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Eastman is sending me a new tailpiece for free. Didn’t ask if I was the original owner or anything like that. Pretty sweet.
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glad to see that this has happened to someone else and how they fixed it. the exact thing happened to my eastman la few weeks ago. im pretty rough on it and have taken my frustrations out on the strings a time or 20 with some rough strumming when trying to nail down a song. but funny enough it happened while it was hanging on the wall. now in east Tennessee the humidity changes are pretty legendary. its nothing for my mandolin to tune itself up or down a half step or two on its own pretty frequently. I saw sierra hull a while back and thats the first thing she said when she came out to perform was that her tech had just tuned it and it was already out of tune before her first song.
does anyone have suggestions for alternative tailpieces that are more durable for an A style 304 eastman? or maybe some metals that i should avoid? and does it matter what size?
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