Andy's Bridge

Firstly, I’m amazed at how many people are now following my blog- many thanks for showing interest in my work!

I’ve made the bridge for Andy’s guitar; it’s really a large version of my mandolin bridge. I feel that the height adjustment screws, which you see on most archtop guitar bridges, must impair the tone and I take my design ideas from the ‘cello in this case i.e. two feet instead of total surface contact. The bridge had to be carefully fitted to the curved soundboard and you can see the process below.

The white pencil lines act as a guide to see where the bridge is making contact and where it isn’t. Of course, the irony of this process is that the wood you have to remove is the wood that is already making contact! Riffler files are great for this type of work; you can accurately remove small areas of wood.

With the bridge roughly made, the guitar was set up- action, intonation etc. I’m very pleased with it so far; it sounds quite different from a flat-top and the pick-up gives a remarkably faithful reproduction of the pure acoustic sound. You’ll be able to see how it sounds for yourself; I’ll do a video when it’s 100% complete.Anyway it’s now been stripped down again and the finishing process is underway. The bridge and tailpiece needed a bit of tweaking and the finished items are below.

Here’s episode XVI of the parlour guitar series; hope you like it!