Double Bass Bridge work for my DB

[Steve Swan]

Jeff Sahs in Sacramento is the king of great setup in your part of California. Give him a call at (916) 739-1962. You won't believe how nice your bass will play. He's a wonderful guy, too.

 

[Cody Sisk]

Piece of cake. Right?



BTW - this is the easiest part of the whole process.

also - this is not my video. Someone else doing some nice work.

My method is very similar here. I like to see that he's threading into the bridge foot so that the disc pushes up on the bridge.

I ran my apprentice through this procedure the other day. She was quite overwhelmed. It's not easy to do right..

Also, notice from the video how many different tools it took to undertake this procedure. People whining about the price of a luthier's work fail to realize that not only are they trying to scratch a living, they have to recoup the expense of having a shop full of terribly expensive, specialized tools.

 

[vejesse]

So... After you drill your holes from the bottom, when it's time to cut the bridge and clean up the faces do you simply rely on your layout lines to make the faces square with the drilled holes? How often does that come out perfect? (notice in the video that it did not) How much "adjusting" do you have to do with the belt sander after you tap the hole and screw in the adjuster, which then shows how far off you are? What if you need to adjust but run into difficulty because the top of the bass is uneven or one leg of the bridge has to be shorter?

Anyone wonder how I do it?

 

[Cody Sisk]

So... After you drill your holes from the bottom, when it's time to cut the bridge and clean up the faces do you simply rely on your layout lines to make the faces square with the drilled holes? How often does that come out perfect? (notice in the video that it did not) How much "adjusting" do you have to do with the belt sander after you tap the hole and screw in the adjuster, which then shows how far off you are? What if you need to adjust but run into difficulty because the top of the bass is uneven or one leg of the bridge has to be shorter?

Anyone wonder how I do it?

The crucial part is getting the holes drilled perfect. If you're just a smidgen off, it's a real headache to correct it. Unless you're installing those new MPM adjusters . I've sometimes had to ream out the hole I drilled, insert a tapered peg hole filler and start over..

 

[George700DL]

So... After you drill your holes from the bottom, when it's time to cut the bridge and clean up the faces do you simply rely on your layout lines to make the faces square with the drilled holes? How often does that come out perfect? (notice in the video that it did not) How much "adjusting" do you have to do with the belt sander after you tap the hole and screw in the adjuster, which then shows how far off you are? What if you need to adjust but run into difficulty because the top of the bass is uneven or one leg of the bridge has to be shorter?

Anyone wonder how I do it?

In my case, after making the cut, I rubbed lipstick on the wheel, inserted it into the bridge till I had full contact, took the adjuster out, and scraped the colored areas. Repeat until it's all colored. I have a perfect fit now. Definitely not perfect right off the saw blade.

So, how do you do it?

 

[PaulCannon]

So, how do you do it?

I started apprenticing at a local shop a few months ago and just learned how to install the adjusters. One of my colleagues likes to fit the wheels by sight using a chisel and plane. Another likes to mark the edges that touch the wheel with graphite and hold the bridge legs (or feet) to a disc sander.

Personally, I like to chisel and sand it until I'm out of wood and have to start over.

 

[bigolbassguy]

I started apprenticing at a local shop a few months ago and just learned how to install the adjusters. One of my colleagues likes to fit the wheels by sight using a chisel and plane. Another likes to mark the edges that touch the wheel with graphite and hold the bridge legs (or feet) to a disc sander.

Personally, I like to chisel and sand it until I'm out of wood and have to start over.

LMAO

 

[james condino]

Personally, I like to chisel and sand it until I'm out of wood and have to start over.

Paul:

It sounds like you are exactly where you are supposed to be at this point in the learning cycle. Keep it up and you've got a chance at greatness.

Ever hear the story of a young James D'Acquisto telling John D'Angelico, "Yeah, yeah old man... I got it under control..." and then walking over to the buffer with a customer's guitar in hand while the customer was in sight. He proceeded to slam the guitar into the buffer, catch the still attached strap on the buffing wheel, the machine grabbed the guitar out of his hands and then smashed it into several hundred pieces while the whole shop was looking at him...some days you've got to work hard to follow in the footsteps of a genious before you...

What I really want to know is what's with all these stories of "lipstick on my bridge"??? Is that some sort of sly euphamism? There is no way I could talk my way out of that one when I got home at the end of the day....


j.

 

[George700DL]

What I really want to know is what's with all these stories of "lipstick on my bridge"??? Is that some sort of sly euphamism? There is no way I could talk my way out of that one when I got home at the end of the day....


j.

Hi James,

The idea comes from this very forum, a few years back.

George

 

[Ozmoid]

Personally, I like to chisel and sand it until I'm out of wood and have to start over.

There is a certain satisfaction there.

 

[Jake deVilliers]

I would be interested to see what some of the luthiers commenting on this thread think about the methods in the video.
1) I've used inserts on two bridges to change the threads in order to use a Full Circle. Although I didn't notice a change in tone, it seems that inserts certainly wouldn't help and aren't necessary.
2) The bridge top doesn't make much contact with the adjuster wheels. That can't be good and especially weird since he used wooden wheels. Were that my bass, I'd ask him to finish his work.

But it was an interesting video nonetheless.

Hmm...

He's certainly doing it the hard way and I'm not sure I like the results. It looks to me that his finished adjusters end up weighing MUCH more than the solid aluminium ones I get from Upton. There are also 2 extra tone transfers in there - it goes wood/metal/metal/metal/wood whereas mine go wood/metal/wood.


I've developed a procedure that takes me probably about the same amount of time as that guy takes to do all that nice layout.

After fully fitting and dressing the bridge, I :

a) bolt the bridge into my holder and mark two lines where the waste will be removed for the wheels to live

b) find the centres of the legs at the tops of the cuts

c) transfer those marks to the bottoms of the feet

d) find and mark the opposing centres and mark 'G' & 'E'

e) clamp the fixture into the cross vise on my big drill press

f) drill the two holes

g) tip the fixture forward and tap the holes with the power tap in my screw gun

h) mark and slice off the feet on my real 10" Delta table saw

i) re-cut on the other line after moving the fence in 3/32"

j) drill out the upper holes to 1/4" to accept the smooth shank

k) countersink all 4 holes

l) smooth all surfaces on a big flat mill bastard file

m) wax the threads and the upper bearing surfaces

n) install bridge

It used to take me a while but I have all the tools together to make it happen very quickly.

All the drilling and tapping gear is in the same drawer as the adjusters. The pieces of plexi that I use for the layout are in the next drawer over.

The drill press and table saw are expensive, full-size, accurate machines that I wouldn't want to try to make things without. I spend a lot of time working with old school hand tools but this is one procedure where machinery makes for the fastest, most accurate result.

If I told you how long it took me to do this the OP would be mad at all luthiers so I won't. But its essential to be able to make good money on some services to offset the many occasions where a job takes far longer than the price on the website covers.

My clients seem to like that I offer a set price for the most common work and I do my damnedest to stick to what I quoted.

I don't think I missed anything but if I did, please mention it!

 

[Cody Sisk]

If I told you how long it took me to do this the OP would be mad at all luthiers so I won't. But its essential to be able to make good money on some services to offset the many occasions where a job takes far longer than the price on the website covers.

Amen!