Gypsy Bridge--Your Opinion

happyjazzer

How do cheap commercial gypsy bridges compare with a hand crafted luthier made bridge compare? Your thoughts?

paulmcevoy75

I think on a cheap guitar it's probably not going to make a huge difference. On a nicely built, lively guitar, I bet you it gets you a nice 8.5%. But somewhere between 5-15%.

Or could make no difference whatsoever. Or a lot, I guess.

Anyway, I'm sticking to my answer.

On my most recent guitar, I had a maple bridge for a while and I switched it out for Wenge. I didn't do a lot of AB testing but I think the Wenge sounded slightly "better" for most things, but it wasn't a radical difference. They weren't radically different in mass. I thought the Maple bridge looked a little funny, mostly you're looking for something dark colored there.

pdg

The majority of GJ bridges, including on Selmers I think, are Indian rosewood.

It's not like maple violin bridges, where the utmost characteristics of the piece of maple, and the detailed carving of the bridge, are crucial.

For GJ guitar bridges It has everything to do with the mass of the entire bridge, the fit of the bridge feet to the top (which you have to do with any new bridge), and the string slots (ditto).

I suppose there could be better or worse Indian rosewood, but I think (not sure on this) that, unless you have an unusually soft piece, the particular piece of Indian rosewood wouldn't make much difference.

Buco

They compare fine generally speaking, if you're asking about their quality. They'll do the job as long at the feet are fitting well to the top.

If you're asking about the sound quality, every time I changed the bridge, there was a subtle but noticeable difference. It's not a better worse kind of thing. It's like every bridge changed the EQ curve of the sound slightly.

djazzy

My first guitar was a D500. Not terrible but it did come with an ebony bridge, which may or may not be "cheap" but I didn't like the sound one bit. So somehow I decided to swap the ebony for a rosewood & was very satisfied with the result. The sound had more...pop, or lift, or whatever. Subtle but noticeable, as Buco stated. I regret having included that rosewood bridge with the guitar when I sold it.

I'd really like there to be a market for bridges in different kinds of wood & material. It seems like common sense to me that they would produce different sounds... though maybe not as much as I could imagine since they don't vibrate like strings and top wood do? But maybe something worth experimenting with anyway.

paulmcevoy75

https://www.djangobooks.com/forum/discussion/comment/123244#Comment_123244

Ebony is probably the outlier for bridges, Indian rosewood and other reasonable choices are more similar to each other and equally different from ebony.

I think (!!) that it is mostly the density of the wood that regulates how it interacted with a particularl top/guitar, but there likely is a lesser consideration with how fast/well the material transmits vibration (its damping level).

Btw there might be a use case where a heavy ebony bridge has a positive effect on a guitar (maybe something that's a bit too lively and wolfy). One thing I want to do going forward is have a bunch of bridges of different materials and heights that I can try out on a new guitar (with CNC that's fairly easy even though I find bridges pretty annoying to make)

I wish I was better at resisting chat GPT but I asked how ebony compared with other woods for density.

https://chatgpt.com/s/t_68e69841687c81918c735fc94b78f8ec

scot

I made many bridges for my Favino, like this one, and then another like it where I removed even more wood. I also made one with a foot in the center and all the surrounding wood removed, fitted a bone saddle, etc. Usually ebony but sometime rosewood. Most were not what I'd call successful, that's to say they did not improve the guitar in the way I was looking for. This one did, it aired out the natural dark sound of that guitar in a way I really liked. Things like a bridge might change a small aspect of the sound, but not the essential character of a guitar