Installing a bridge on a new body

[Metalmoore]

Well i got an unfinished body ready to be painted but how do i plot where the brdige goes. Cant find info anywhere about it so a step by step guide or tutorial or something would be great.

Cheers, Andrew

[roberthabraken]

Originally Posted by Metalmoore

Well i got an unfinished body ready to be painted but how do i plot where the brdige goes. Cant find info anywhere about it so a step by step guide or tutorial or something would be great.

Cheers, Andrew

It's quite easy: it goes at the distance of the scale length from the edge of the nut.

So if you're bass has a scale length of 34", measure 34" from the edge of the nut. At this line, the saddles are placed (in their foremost position).

If you don't have a long ruler, you can also measure half the scale length from the 12th fret.

[Musiclogic]

give the saddles 1/8" to move forward, if you install the bridge at 34 with the saddles all full forward, you leave only room for intonation going back(to the sharp, no correction to the flat), and this is not usually the case.

[roberthabraken]

Originally Posted by Musiclogic

give the saddles 1/8" to move forward, if you install the bridge at 34 with the saddles all full forward, you leave only room for intonation going back(to the sharp, no correction to the flat), and this is not usually the case.

yeah it is always good to have some correction possibilities, but if your instrument is built correctly, and the bridge placed exactly at the scale length, you wouldn't need forward intonation correction:

the correction is necessary to compensate for the increase in pitch by pressing the strings down. the thicker the string, the more the pitch increases, the more correction needed (you always see the bridge tilted back to the bass side).

the vibrating length of the strings should always be slightly longer than the scale length, because of this increased pitch by pressing down. forward correction would make the string shorter than the scale length and pressing it down would increase the pitch even more, resulting in bad tuning.

so, theoretically you could move them completely forward, but i don't do that myself because the idea of having some extra space is always comfortable.. but if you need it, you probably misplaced the bridge

[Beej]

I agree with Robert. In theory its a good idea to have some wiggle room for the string to be on the short end of the scale, but in practice... well in my own practice of over 20 years of setting up guitars and basses, I have never once had to move the saddles forward of the scale length...