Quoting for a unique job

Hi, all. I've a regular who has asked me to make a new custom bridge for his archtop. It's not something I've done before from scratch, so a bit unsure as to how long it will take and what to quote for it. It's quite an involved job, so I don't want to go too low, but nor do I wish to scare him off with a big old number!

It's going to be a regular two-part bridge, ebony, fairly large with a focus on good intonation and fit.

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Permalink Reply by Frank Ford on October 14, 2016 at 12:25pm

Depending on style, I'd expect to quote about the same as I would for making a new Martin bridge from scratch, including setup and gluing.

Time really goes by fast when you're doing this kind of work. . .

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Permalink Reply by LARRY KLOSE on October 15, 2016 at 9:15am

Before going the hard route, check out Cumberland Acoustics bridges. Steve Smith makes a great bridge that is a repro of an L5 bridge but with spot-on intonation. I put one on an archtop I had with one of the cheap import bridges that was pretty rough. He even made me a custom base because the guitar's top contour was different from the original design.

I also have one of Steve's bridges on an F5 that came with a similar import bridge. It improved the sound as well as the intonation. He uses super quality ebony and they are machined very precisely so that they don't lean to any appreciable degree.

Steve sells bridges to Lynn Dudenbostel and other top builders and, I think, Gibson.

http://cumberlandacoustic.com/

Larry, enthusiastic user but NFI.