Double Bass Experimenting with different woods for bridges, any suggestions?

[uprightben]

I said to throw out coarse grained woods because I think it would look bad, and what happens if your g string notch ends up right on one of those porus rings? Seems like trouble to me. If Arnold thinks wenge would work, well I'd listen to him over me any time. You will be hard pressed to find a more expert opinion than him on the interweb.

I think a rosewood flatback is a great idea. I wouldn't want to carve a round back out of rosewood, you would have to sharpen your gouges so much there would be nothing left! In general, I think that the back and sides and even the neck are a great place to use something other than maple, hell the old italians themselves often used european poplar. A friend of mine in college had a Kolstien made out of cherry that was a very nice instrument to look at and to hear, and if you want to see something beautiful, check out Arnold's walnut bass on his website.

One last thing, I don't think anyone is trying to say asthetics don't matter, they matter a lot. I value clean work and good design just as much as playability and sound. I think a maker would be hard pressed to get top dollar for a new bass that looked sloppy, poorly concieved, or just plain ugly.

 

[james condino]

As long as we're veering off topic, even more than the price of materials, the main reason I haven't attempted to use dalbergia nigra for ribs is because of the tendency to crack. While it usually sounds incredible, I work on so many Brazilian rosewood guitars on a regular basis that have cracked, I just figure it as part of the turf when building. I generally think that is the main reason why a lot of guitar builders charge an upgrade fee of $2 for it. You can get a nice set for $500, but the likely hood of repair or warranty work in the future is VERY high. Tonally I love the stuff. I'm always amazed at how guitar nerds flip out over it and yet 9 out of 10 bass nerds will want to remove the Brazilian rosewood fingerboard and tailpiece and replace them with ebony. Ben's rosewood flatback idea sounds tremendous- at a serious cost....

I have an incredible local source for d. melanoxia (African Blackwood), but my experience building with it in the past is that I don't like the bit of sonic compression that it gives an instrument, and it is one of the woods that I'm now very sensitized to. For a bass, it would make a fingerboard that approaches black granite!

j.

 

[powerbass]

I agree w/the statement about material availability for bass construction becoming scarce, for this reason I am most interested in locally (Northeast/New England for me) available woods. Wide, thick white pine is still very plentiful, willow and walnut grow in many back yards in my neighborhood. As for making a bridge I have some quatersawn cherry and maple as well as some very dense white oak sitting in my firewood pile in addition to some incredible tiger maple from a tree cut down this spring. Many of the slow growing fruit trees like apple, pear, peach can yield some very nice wood for bridges. I had an incredible piece of lilac wood from a very large vine that was super dense. Hop horn beam (also called Iron wood) would be perfect fingerboard wood. Thinking outside the box about materials for bass construction can include not even using exotic woods. P.S. This Prescott bass got me thinking since all the materials excluding the fingerboard was made from native New England wood species http://www.kensmithbasses.com/doublebasses/prescott/

 

[gbs52]

At the IBMA I saw a bridge made out of thick Plexoglass and the bass sounded good. Has anyone tried the carbon fiber bridges? It don't hurt to experiment. I would say hard maple wasn't the first wood used but was found to be one of the best........