Kerfing the Bridge

[John Cadd]

Kerfing the linings is meant to help the vibrations in the top.How much difference would kerfing the Rosewood bridge make?Keep the bone in one piece if you like.
How many patterns of bridge have been tried to get some extra resonance from the strings?
A violin bridge stands high compared to a guitar bridge.The bow movement is converted to up down movement.A guitar bridge is doing all it can to stop the string vibrating.
How about a sideways (flat ) version .For some reason I keep thinking of a 2CV Citroen suspension system. One crazy idea was to have 3 strings attached one side of the guitar and 3 strings the other side.So normal vibrating strings but split each way below the bridge.
Fantasy guitar time.

[John Cadd]

What was in my mind would put more strain on everything .Not a good idea.So what we are left with is the loop or no loop .Is there a tone benefit? I noticed an improvement when I got rid of the loops.I used three small pieces of ebony to hold the knots. Two strings each.

[Ned Knepp]

Frank,
That Gibson anti-rotation device is..... well, it's just ugly but I suppose (hope) it was effective.

Ned

[Ned Knepp]

John,
When you say "loop" I assume that you mean the metal "ball" that is inserted at the end of steel strings.

I don't know if replacing the "ball" with an ebony pin would make any difference or not. I can see that replacing them with wood might cut down on the mass of things just a bit, assuming that you are using a pin bridge and left out the pins too, so maybe that is what happened. I just don't know. My gut says that there isn't enough change in mass in removing just the balls from the strings to make a difference in how the guitar sounds. You're not really removing all of the mass/ weight of the balls since you replaced these with a fairly heavy, dense wood.

I've seen some guitars on the Internet that used fixed metal pins in either a tail piece, belly bridge or even mounted directly into the end block through the face or the end of the guitar. I can't say how well this works since I've only seen pictures but I think the only one that would apply to our discussion is the one with a belly bridge. II don't particularly like the idea of a tail piece on a flat top because of low break over angles which I feel negatively effect the volume and power of the instrument. Personally, I like the pin bridge on flat top guitars because it doesn't depend only upon the glue joint between the bridge plate, top and bridge to hold it all together and it gives an excellent break over angle at the saddle.

I admit that I find the idea of using a dowel, running through loops intriguing but I think that changing strings with such a system would be a major pain unless a way could be found to hold the strings in place on the dowel until the strings were tightened. Perhaps a single dowel with some manner of holding the loops in place until the strings could be threaded from underneath would make it easier. It would have to be very light weight yet strong enough to handle the focused pressure that string tension would create. Of course, this is coming from someone who never changes just one string. If I need to change one, I change all of them.

I have some very small brass tubing that might work for something like this. It's certainly strong enough but I don't know how much weight/mass it would save. I've got an old SIGMA that needs some work. If I every get around to repairing it, I might experiment a bit with this idea.

Ned

[John Cadd]

The loops on a classical.That sort.I saw one way to fit the strings and the instruction was to push the loop down as far as possible.All that bit was like a normal classical set-up.

[Ned Knepp]

Well, John, it seems that we are talking apples and oranges. The only loop end strings I know of are strings that are meant to be hooked on tail pieces. In my case, banjos and mandolins so I assumed you were talking steel strings. I guess I don't know what you are talking about and my ignorance showing.

Ned

[John Cadd]

Oh Ned ,you make me feel guilty now. This was a bad topic to kick off with I think. There are so many people worrying about volume all the time .They fret about not being in orchestras,which seems a potty idea.I like guitars and I like orchestras but don`t see why people need to combine them.Pass the shovel and we`ll bury this one.

[Ned Knepp]

No reason for you to feel bad, John. I'm the one that misunderstood.

Ned

[John Cadd]

It`s what I always say to people---"There`s a lot of nice people on Frets Net."
See my next new idea for a guitar seat that I made yesterday.No photos though.