Bigsby felt pads: leave them on or take them off?

[Rusty Shackleford]

I've searched some other forums about this and it seems opinions vary.  I have a B5 that's ready to go on, but don't know the pros/cons of leaving the felt pads on or taking them off. 

What say yoos?

Thanks!

 

[mayfly]

I left 'em on.  the bigsby works great.

 

[TBurst Std]

Left them on all 3 of my Bigsby (Bigsby like) guitars

 

[PhilHill]

Leaving them on would probably help keep the finish in better shape. And, as has been said, it does not seem to affect the operation at all.

 

[Rick]

I like the felt

 

[mayfly]

I like to be felt...

 

[Verne Bunsen]

I like to feelt dangit nevermind.

I leave the felt on.

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

Thanks everyone. Seems unanimous.  I left the felt on.  So that's done.  Now I have to figure out the pickup situation...  Ordered some Wide Range Humbuckers from Righteous Sound Pickups.  Josh is a cool guy and I got some P90s from him a while ago.  He used to work for Lollar and acutally used to wire the Regals there which were Lollar's WRHBs.  But mine sound like a blanket is over them.  He told me to use 500k pots which I did (and .022 caps), but maybe I need 1 meg pots.  I sent him an email and am waiting for the response.

Thanks again!

 

[TBurst Std]

If I recall correctly, the original WRHBs had 1 meg pots.
Pots are fairly cheap. Try it.

 

[Rick]

One meh pots will open it up

 

[Rusty Shackleford]

To close the loop on the pickups - it turned out to be somewhere in the braided cables coming off the switch.  I'm guessing one of the braids penetrated into the cloth part causing some of the signal to go to ground.  After testing the pots by themselves and seeing that they worked fine, I replaced all the braided cables and BAM!  Josh from https://www.righteoussoundpickups.com/ is a great guy and really helpful.  And makes a great product.  This is the second set of pups I got from him; the other being his Monte P90s.  He used to work for Lollar so you know he knows what he's doing!