Question about bridges

Jeff Moore

You were asking if hollow is good. Yes. And if Rosewood is good, Yes. And only the two feet on the bridge need connect to the guitar but:
You didn't say a bunch of stuff that could give you an answer about your bridges. What kind of guitar are you talking about? Do the bridge feet really fit the guitar? It can't just sit on a couple of its edges and casually look right, it's two feet must smoothly and evenly touch the top of the the surface of your guitar. It's just not as easy as replacing bridges.

Sure, strings matter, and are easy to change, but no string will sound good if your bridge doesn't fit. Strings come later. I think people are rightly hesitant to try and tell you how to fit your bridge to your guitar, but that comes before anything else including strings.
Look for daylight under your bridge feet. If you see any, get help, or follow some instructions for doing this yourself. It's not hard if your reasonably handy with tools, mostly sandpaper in this case. Don't do anything till you know what all the goals are and how to get there though. There may or may not be other things you must consider before even fitting the feet of your new bridge (like it's too short to begin with?).
You may be lucky and the feet just somehow fit your guitar top neatly enough.
Hope so!

Jeff Moore

To me, that video shows several misconceptions. He doesn't show how to seat a bridge though it looks like he may have tried to do that.
Though we don't glue shims, shims are a standard remedy used by the lowest and greatest GJ guitarists to adjust string height. There's a vid with Stochelo selecting shims for his Selmer. Using a quarter to determine string height for both low E and high E is bizarre.

Jazzaferri

Lango-Django wrote: »

Just one more bridge question... sorry!

GJ bridges contact the top of the guitar with one foot at the bass end, another foot at the treble end, and a long gap between the two.

Archtop guitar bridges contact the top along the bridge's entire length, and luthiers/technicians sometimes use carbon paper to test whether the contact between the two is perfect and sand the bridge carefully to eliminate even miniscule gaps.

Can anyone explain this discrepancy?

Better still, has anyone ever experimented with a bridge that makes total contact with a GJ guitar top?

Will

Good archtop guitars from makers like Benedetto have two foot bridges for a single piece (acoustic) bridge as opposed to a flat single slab for an adjustable bridge. Using an adjustable bridge has a major impact on the acoustic sound but doesn't seem to change the electric sound much.

Russell Letson

Lango-Django--Just an idle-curiosity question: How did your Dunn come to have what sounds like an archtop bridge? Michael's stock instruments have his version of the Maccaferri mustache bridge. Though I recall he has built at least one archtop, so maybe you're not describing one of his Selmeroids?

Lango-Django

Good question, Russell!

Michael custom-built the guitar for me to look like a vintage Gibson L-4 but have the interior bracing and interior soundbox do a gypsy guitar, so it's sort of a hybrid and depending how you play it, it can sound like either an archtop or a gypsy guitar.

He originally put an adjustable archtop bridge on it, but I have recently experimented by putting on a solid rosewood bridge, which is much better for bringing out the midrange... before, it had a great oomph to the bass and a lot of nice overtones to the high notes, thanks to the interior soundbox; but somehow the midrange response was fairly minimal.

It's a lot better now, but I'm just wondering if totally flattening down that bridge would improve it even more...?

Russell Letson

What an interesting-sounding instrument. Michael's ingenuity and adventurousness always amazes. I take it that your guitar is modeled on the roundhole/archtop rather than the mid-30s f-hold version. How thin did Michael carve the top?

Lango-Django

yes, it does have an oval sound hole like my other idol Eddie Lang's old-school L4. But the big advantage with gypsy-style guitars is that they don't require the heavy strings that arch tops do in order to sound good, and are therefore much more user-friendly, especially for us geezers.

The top of my guitar is cedar and looks to be about an eighth of an inch thick.

I've now decided to go for it and just shave off the bottom of my bridge so that it is completely horizontal and see what happens... Worst case scenario I'll have to replace it.

Will

pickitjohn

@Lango-Django

Hey Will…

It would be interesting to see a BEFORE & AFTER picture.
Be nice to see a picture of your guitar also.

I can't remember ever seeing an arch top bridge flat across the bottom, seem to remember a post about the foot of the bridge resting over internal braces.

I did a search for Arch top Bridges on ebay, all had space open in the middle, you may be on to something, I believe it's already been tried and the open space reduces the weight which will affect the sound. Many other bridge post here speak of that factor.

Wish you luck with your endeavor.

JMHO another thought, if this is the original bridge you may consider trying this experiment on non original parts.

pick on

pickitjohn

pickitjohn

Back again, your post got my snooping glasses on.
Upon google search for Archtop Bridges quite a few turned up solid across the button.
Here's a picture of one that looked interesting to me…



This came from acoustic guitar forum very interesting read.

http://www.acousticguitarforum.com/forums/showthread.php?t=153444

pick on

pickitjohn

Jazzaferri

Check out Bob Benedetto's book, making an archtop guitar, there is a chapter on making and fitting bridges and tailpieces.

Also note that, not all archtops are built as electroacoustic instruments. Purely acoustic archtops are in fact very lightly built and can be made to accomodate the tensions of classic strings or the heavier tensioned gj strings.

If you really want to learn about optimizing your guitar purchase a copy of Roger Siminoff's "The Luthier's Handbook". The chapter on bridges is excellent and he discusses how the different bridges function.

He states that for an acoustic instrument the most important factor affecting the sound is that BOTH FEET fit the top perfectly. That means taping fine thin backed sandpaper to the contact points and carefully sanding in the bridge so the contact is perfect....no gaps no thick lines, anywhere.

Imo, the next biggest factor is mass of the bridge.

Adjustable bridges only work for electric instruments.