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Double Bass Put non-adjustable bridge back on

#21
playbass0410 said:
My information most probably is worth nothing as amplifying and DB is an art depending on the bass, music style, strings, bridge, tailpiece, setup, house, PA, playing technique and style, personal preferences, preamp, amp, not to forget athomsperic pressure and voodoo...:
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Your information is excellent, its from players that use and test existing products that we manufacturers can make better ones.

My thought process so far was in fact drilling a hole like an adjustor hole into the bridge feet, and inserting a custom made bar pickup to then pickup all the internal vibrations within the bridge itself and amplify them before they are transmitted into the bass top, then a step further and incorporate a body piezo pickup located inside which will allow you via a 3 way switch to select bridge / body or both. All thoughts and ideas at the moment.
 
#22
mirwa said:
Your information is excellent, its from players that use and test existing products that we manufacturers can make better ones.

My thought process so far was in fact drilling a hole like an adjustor hole into the bridge feet, and inserting a custom made bar pickup to then pickup all the internal vibrations within the bridge itself and amplify them before they are transmitted into the bass top, then a step further and incorporate a body piezo pickup located inside which will allow you via a 3 way switch to select bridge / body or both. All thoughts and ideas at the moment.
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Interesting. Of course, the embedded bridge pickup (of which there are several examples) will be influenced by the table and by the body by virtue of their contributed mechanical impedances. I trust you are aware of this but wanted to point out that an embedded bridge pickup really is influenced by far more than the "bridge itself."
 
#24
First time I put an adjustable bridge on my (first ever) bass I didn't like it at all, lost a lot of sound. I think it had steel rods inside. Took it off and put back the non-adjustable after a couple of days. I put up with changing action due to weather for many years after that. Now I have two basses (one with steel strings, one with guts) with adjustable bridges, both all wood (the bridges I mean) and they sound great. Different from non-adjustable? Maybe, I don't know. First one I put on was at the same time I switched from gut to steel strings, second one was within days after buying my second bass. Hard to compare.
I read an article somewhere years ago. Someone tested all kinds of adjustable bridges and compared them. Steel, aluminum, wood, they all had different characteristics. I guess it's all down to taste.
 
#25
OK. This is totally unscientific conjecture, but let's consider the main difference in the way a solid bridge transmits vibration to the top compared to one with adjusters. Let's call the bridge standing up on the table the Z-axis. The bridge top moves in all axes, X, Y, and Z. With a solid bridge, the feet will transmit much more X and Y, compared to an adjustable bridge (especially one with 1/4" aluminum studs), which will likely have less X and Y, and concentrate most of the energy to the top along the Z-axis.
This seems like a good thing to me. The sound which comes from the top (the sound of your bass!) comes almost entirely from this Z-axis energy.

All of the careful trimming of the bridge top (heart, wings, thickness, etc.) tunes the way the strings respond and transmit vibration to the legs. By installing adjusters you are not negating this work, just subtly changing what happens at the feet. If my armchair hypothesis is valid, then we might conclude that an adjustable bridge would make the bass louder overall, but perhaps at the cost of nuance and detail.

In the end there are a million variables, and it just comes down to the individual bass and its player's taste. I've used only adjustable (1/4" aluminum) bridges on my own basses for the last 25 years, and played on 5-string orchestra basses with solid bridges, but have personally had no opportunity to make any proper A-B comparisons.
 
#26
The difficult thing is that there are so many variables that often go unconsidered when comparing a fixed bridge to an adjustable.

I think one could pretty confidently assert that:
  1. The quality of the maple that the bridge is made of, as well as
  2. the quality of the job fitting each of the bridges to the bass (especially matching feet to top)
both play significantly more of a role in tonal differences (good or bad) than does the existence (or non-existence) of adjusters.
 
#27
Mark Gollihur said:
The difficult thing is that there are so many variables that often go unconsidered when comparing a fixed bridge to an adjustable.

I think one could pretty confidently assert that:
  1. The quality of the maple that the bridge is made of, as well as
  2. the quality of the job fitting each of the bridges to the bass (especially matching feet to top)
both play significantly more of a role in tonal differences (good or bad) than does the existence (or non-existence) of adjusters.
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3) The material the adjuster is made out of.
 
#28
Eric Hochberg said:
3) The material the adjuster is made out of.
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Very true, as well! But I think that is one that people do often speak about - hardwood, aluminum, brass, composite...

It's the factors that are unrelated to the adjusters at all that I was reminding people of. The idea that you could buy two bridges by the same manufacturer (cut from the same tree, even) and install them - and one bridge might sound quite better than the other, is kind of my point.
 
#29
robobass said:
All of the careful trimming of the bridge top (heart, wings, thickness, etc.) tunes the way the strings respond and transmit vibration to the legs. By installing adjusters you are not negating this work, just subtly changing what happens at the feet.
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Im sorry, but I so dis-agree.

You acknowledge that you believe fitment makes subtle changes.

This is the art of luthery, its the subtle changes that we do that makes an instrument sing or a play like a dog.
 

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