Banjo Bridges by BartAre darn good hand-made banjo bridges that offer exceptional tone, volume, sound clarity and enhanced sustain. I've been making them for a while now but I never cease to be amazed at how such a tiny piece of wood can cause such a profound change in sound. The bridges are available in a variety of local and exotic woods and can be straight or totally custom compensated to cure your banjo's intonation woes. |
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I design my bridges with the same thinking that goes into racing cars: go for max performance and the best possible tone. I don't design them to impress scientific instruments or physics theories. Instead I design them to please human ears. There are many factors I take into account: wood species, shape, stability are some of the most important ones. Weight is another one: keep it as low as you can while keeping it structually sound. Less weight means fewer string vibrations get swallowed up by the wood's mass. In plain words: more sound can transfer from the strings to the tone ring. Each wood species has its own sweet spots for optimum performance so it's not practical to think in terms of gram weight. Adopting, and sticking to, an arbitrary gram weight number would impose severe restrictions on performance and tone and, of course, developement of new bridge designs. About compensated bridges: I do not make generically compensated bridges, they just don't do the job. Each banjo is unique in its intonations requirements so intonation corrections to need to be addressed on a string by string basis: what works for one banjo does not work for another, simple as that. With custom compensated by yours truly you can expect:
OK, so I used to word 'perfect' a lot. Yeah, I know, meaning of course, "as close to perfect as you can get." Keep in mind these bridges are hand-made and I'm a banjo player, not a mill wright. They do look nice but they do not look like mass-produced pieces of mathematical perfection. They are, however, made by a banjo player for banjo players. I play both three finger and clawhammer styles, I know exactly what banjo players need and/or want. For tenor, or plectrum, banjos, the designs were made according to input from, and "test drives" by pro-level 4 string players to get the maximum results for their styles of playing. Since they're totally custom made, even the straight (non-compensated) ones, here's an awesome side effect: you get to tell me exactly how you want me to make your bridge. Here's the wish list when you order one:
One word of warning: my custom compensated bridges are definitely quite unconventional in the looks department: be prepared to consider them as functional works of art and keep in mind the shape and curves are determined by the "sweet spot" measurements for YOUR banjo. The shape of the curve will be different for another banjo. Just to be sure, when measuring the sweet spots make sure you measure them for the height of the bridge you want. In other words, if you have a 3/4" inch tall bridge and you want a 5/8" jobbie you must do the measurements at the 5/8" height else the numbers will be way different. It might help if you tell me what style you play and what kind of banjo you have, this way I can help you choose the right bridge for you. You might be looking for something real mellow and you wouldn't be happy if it turns out the one you ordered happens to be bright and snappy. Keep in mind too that changing a bridge, even on stage, is real simple. Keeping a couple of other bridges around just to sound different on certain tunes can come in real handy. Suppose you have an archtop that can bite your head off and you want to play a couple of dreamy sounding waltzes - no prob, I can hook you up. |
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