I am<not> a luthier, but a piano technician, so have some shop experience. I have an EKO ABG with the standard one piece wooden bridge. I would like to make 4 separate bridges so I can adjust string length more accurately. What type of wood do you recommend I use? Thanks
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Bridge replacement
- Thread starter Sheffey Gregory
- Start date
If you mean the wood itself, I'd try to match whatever's on there already. If you mean the saddle material, I like tusq. Eko has made a variety of bass designs over the years, what's yours look like? Trapeze or fixed bridge?
I don't know what a "trapeze" bridge is, this is a [moveable] single piece of wood with grooves cut out for the strings. It was purchased around 1980, and is a fretless ABG. I have some old upright bass bridges, I considered chopping up one of those.
Got it 
In that case, I'd recommend a dark, hard, hardwood like rosewood or something similar in appearance. I think you'd want a harder wood so that it doesn't absorb/dampen the string's motion. You could make up four small bridges to work together, but you could also make one with the same footprint, but a wider saddle top so that you could carve individual saddle points over a wider range. I hope that makes sense. The wider top will allow you to put the witness points further apart from one another (further towards or away from the nut).
In that case, I'd recommend a dark, hard, hardwood like rosewood or something similar in appearance. I think you'd want a harder wood so that it doesn't absorb/dampen the string's motion. You could make up four small bridges to work together, but you could also make one with the same footprint, but a wider saddle top so that you could carve individual saddle points over a wider range. I hope that makes sense. The wider top will allow you to put the witness points further apart from one another (further towards or away from the nut).
Pretty sure my upright and most uprights use maple. Presumably hard maple aka rock maple (aka sugar maple) best I recall those are all the same tree, really.
Of course, if you're a piano technician you should have some old ebony bits from old pianos' black keys kicking around ;-) I'd shape them just enough to work while keeping it clear what their history was...
Nice to see someone else that uses black tapewounds.
Of course, if you're a piano technician you should have some old ebony bits from old pianos' black keys kicking around ;-) I'd shape them just enough to work while keeping it clear what their history was...
Nice to see someone else that uses black tapewounds.
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I'd make two bridges, one for each pair of strings, with only one string each you can have problems with not having enough pressure to keep the strings from moving around. That looks like a rosewood bridge, but any decently hard wood would work well, ebony would be great.
That's interesting - your current bridge splits the strings' downward forces between a couple of areas, with no force applied to the top in the middle of its span. If you have 4 bridgelets, you're going to get forces applied in that middle area. If the thing is X braced (with the current bridge putting forces where there are braces), the forces from the middle strings may break the top - it may not be braced to handle the load there.
You make a good point, although the middle section of the bridge is big enough to withstand the load (IMHO). This design does not allow the surface of the instrument to bear the load of the strings in an uniform way, not sure what effect may have on the tone.
A lot of guitar designs have an X brace design, where the two lines of the X cross each other near, but not quite under, the bridge. In that kind of design, you only want to put significant force on the places where braces are underneath - I'm thinking that's one reason that the bridge here has a hollow under the middle.
I've seen this in many bridge designs. To me is silly because you would like to take advantage of direct trasmission of the string vibration to the instrument top, especially if is an acoustic design. I'd get a BadAss (JK)
It's fairly common on less expensive semi hollow and hollow body basses, I suspect it has something to do with making it so it doesn't have to be as well fitted. Many Semi-Hollow basses also will have a block under the bridge to help reduce feedback, without a picture inside its hard to know.
Most phones these days are thin enough to fit in the F-holes of a bass to take a picture.
Got it
Yes, that makes sense: Not absorbing the string's motion. I was thinking more about what wood transfers the sound most efficiently, would the rosewood also do that?
Pretty sure my upright and most uprights use maple. Presumably hard maple aka rock maple (aka sugar maple) best I recall those are all the same tree, really.
Of course, if you're a piano technician you should have some old ebony bits from old pianos' black keys kicking around ;-) I'd shape them just enough to work while keeping it clear what their history was...
Nice to see someone else that uses black tapewounds.
Actually, I do have some old sharps, had not thought of using those. I use tapewounds to help approximate an upright sound. I have used the ABG for two community musicals where they wanted upright, and it worked quite well.
Thanks, The two string bridgelet sounds like a smart idea. It might resolve the X-brace issue, I haven't looked/photographed under the current bridge yet to see what is or isn't there. This was originally an acoustic ABG, I added a Dean Markley pickup in the tone hole years ago, which until recently has done well. After I resolve the bridge issue, the next step is perhaps changing the pickup. One variable at a time.
Looks interesting, but I think even at minimum height, it would be too high. And not sure I could resolve the tuning satisfactorily.
Yes, the Hofner bridge is almost undoubtedly too tall. Likewise, if your bass is what I think it is (could we get a pic of the whole bass?) there's nothing to bolt the tune-o-matic or Badass to. I like @Beej idea of the wider bridge and you can carve the intonation point on the top of the bridge to where it's correct. Rosewood would work well but spare ebony piano keys would work also as long as there's enough material to make it tall enough.
