Double Bass different height bridge adjusters (as in different height on g than e side)

[bassist14]

yeah, the moser works great. very cool.

btw, your pictures don't show your bridge on your bass. The bridge is off the bass on some sort of soft cloth.

The topic here was whether both adjusters need to be set at the same height. Is that how you use the adjusters? Or do you crank up one side more than the other?

I was told by a "respectable luthier" -- and many here on TB have confirmed -- that raising the E side adjuster is not the way to set string height. That's what the first post of the thread here was asking...

there is a pic here in post#17:
http://www.talkbass.com/forum/showthread.php?t=212243

i have moser adjusters on two basses, and sometimes raise the height a little different (ca. 2 mm?) on both sides of the bridge. i do this for some years now and do not notice any negative effetcs, only positive!

 

[bonaventura]

Oh, I see it now... Thanks.

Your're probably right -- a 2mm difference probably won't damage the top. If you had a 5mm difference or greater, and strings with heavy tension, who knows?

But the consensus here seems to be that bridge adjusters are designed for raising the upper bridge as a whole. Most agree (or have been told) that adjusters are for raising the overall height of all strings -- not just the E side.

That makes a lot of sense to me, and the Moser adjusters aren't different in this respect.

Differences in individual string heights in relation to the FB are exactly fitted by removing some of the bridge wood once the overall height has been set. If it were me, I would turn the two adjusters the same number of turns up until the E string is at the height I want it, and if the G string is too high then take wood off on the G side until it is also at the height I want. It would also work going the other way, if the G string is to be raised, then fitting the E back down...

 

[bassist14]

imho one of the big advantages of the moser adjusters is the possibility to set both sides of the bridge to different heights, without doing harm to bridge/adjusters/bass
thats what i do.
right now i play e+a pirazzi and d+g oliv.
(before that, combos of pirazzi/obli/spiro on e+a with oliv/ plain gut on d+g)
+ i play classical and jazz on one bass at one gig.
so i use the above described feature of the moser adjusters to mainly raise the d+g for the plain gut/oliv and let i down on the e+a side.
works perfect for me since 5 years now.

 

[bonaventura]

You're starting to convince me...

I checked the Moser website www.moser-mpm.com and was surprised to see (on the English part of the website only) that he mentions this as a possiblity with his adjuster.

He says, and I quote:

"These advantages are a result of the joints built into the MPM mechanism, which give the bridge base an optimal hold on the belly of the instrument at all times. The bridge base does not lift even when the height adjustment of the bridge is set considerably higher on one side than on the other."

Okay, I can see that now. Given the ball mechanism of the Moser adjusters, the bridge can lean a little toward the G side and the feet will stay flat. This is in part his sales argument.

But how far beyond your 2 mm do you think you can go? Moser's website does not address the issue of the need to keep balanced pressure on the top, or at least to avoid undue extremes of imbalance. He does not warn of any danger in abusing his adjusters, naturally. I still think the top might suffer if you had a set of Spirocore Starks and cranked way up on the E side, say, a 5 or 6 mm difference...

Besides the damage risk aspect, what about sound? Who would want all that pressure on just the E side? At some point I would think the G string vibrations would not be transmitted well to the body of the bass. Having that balance is also about getting even sound across all strings.

I think Uncle Toad had this issue once, back in his younger days when he was still experimenting with Gamut Guts and a Stark E...