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Creating an acoustic guitar bridge

2K views 10 replies 7 participants last post by  difalkner 
#1 ·
This is a practice bridge out of Walnut for the guitar I'm building. The actual bridge will be East Indian Rosewood but since I have a lot more Walnut than Rosewood I wanted to make certain my design would work so that lead to a practice bridge.

David

Here's the finished bridge -
Wood


And a video of the entire process -
 
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#4 ·
Thanks, Jim! The saddles will be bone from Bob Colosi and I'll make them by hand. I've made a handful of saddles and nuts out of bone but have yet to use Tusq. I might try it soon, though.

Beautiful work! How did you figure out the intonation for the dual saddle pockets? What will the saddle material be?
Thanks, Bruce! Intonation and compensation isn't really any different from a single-piece saddle. It's just that the 'B' string can now be fully compensated. Measurement is generally from the nut to the 1st string (high 'E') plus a small amount to allow for string stretch during fretting. My Takamine has a two-piece saddle just like this and I have a guitar that I put a new top and bridge on in 1985 and it also has a two-piece saddle. I can use both of those for comparison and measurements to verify placement before gluing this one down.
 
#9 ·
Ok, I made another bridge, smaller this time. The first one is 32 grams and this one is 20 grams. This is the size I intended it to be but the first one was more about testing my CNC programs. This one is more about getting the size correct. Yes, I could have done this all in the same bridge but I like making them and I have a ton of small Walnut pieces on which to practice.

Here's the one I made this afternoon, on top of the first one (the leading edge is lined up and they are the same length - camera parallax factor comes into play) -


And here they are as a comparison; you can see how much smaller the one made today is -


David
 
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