Fitting the Headway transducer II

A couple of posts back, you saw some of the preparation that I do whilst making an instrument that has a transducer built in to it. Here’s the next instalment……

This week, all of the construction was completed on Rob’s Standard mandolin. Before I apply any finish, I like to get the mandolin playing and set-up i.e action and intonation spot-on, this in turn gives the final location of the bridge.

 Low tack masking tape records the bridge’s position. You may wonder why this craftsman leaves the ends of his tape so tatty looking? Smooth it down and you run the risk of your finger nails digging into the soundboard as you struggle to remove the tape!

All of this is painstaking, as you have to drill a hole through the soundboard exactly where the transducer exits the underside of the bridge. I always get Amanda to sight the drill for me; it must be perpendicular.

Then after a period of fiddling around, the transducer gets pulled through its hole; remember all of this is done blind.

Eventually the bridge goes back into its position, the strings back to tension and the transducer tested.