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I have maple, Indian and Brazilian for bridge patch stock, I'm building a dread of Black Acacia and a Carpathian top, which would be your choice for a bridge patch and why? Some folks say anything that wears well, and it dont color the tone at all - others swear by there maple!
Whats your thoughts?

THX
Lance

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

BRW here. But I have been wondering about the same issue.

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Brock Poling
Columbus, Ohio
http://www.polingguitars.com

Rift sawn hard maple for stability. When I used to do a lot of repair work a few years back, I found IR and BRW to have a dampening effect on the sound. I've replaced many IR bridge plates with maple and to my ear the maple plates made the guitar "open up."
Colonial Tonwds38551.8886574074

I have used rift sawn Osage quite a bit and it adds a bit of brightness to the guitar. I have since switched over now to using rift sawn hard maple. I think Maple provides the most neutral sound while BZ can brighten the sound. CE and the boyz used Maple for years and only used RW when they wanted to use up the small scraps. Thinner is better. .060" -.070" is what I am using. Allows the top to be free'r than a patch of .100"+

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tim...
http://www.mcknightguitars.com

My brother swears by maple. I always use padouk. Lighter than rosewood, harder than maple with a lower impedance than maple, similar to rosewood in that respect. Plus, it smells so gooood.

John, I have a big piece-o-paduck, i find it to be very brittle. I have used it once for a bridge patch, but have always worried it would split, Is it just this piece I have thats brittle?

PS, hows retirement treating you?

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

[QUOTE=John Kinnaird] My brother swears by maple. I always use padouk. Lighter than rosewood, harder than maple with a lower impedance than maple, similar to rosewood in that respect. Plus, it smells so gooood.[/QUOTE]

I gave up swearing, maybe 3 or four guitars back. Well, at least at the bridge patch. I've had good success w/ Padauk lately. In fact, perhaps the best sounding guitars I've built used Padauk as the bridge plate.

Steve

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Anything goes, if it's the right piece.

Braz. is fine, African BW can be great if you use it for the right one, cocobolo can be great, too, if you're looking to stiffen a weak top and don't mind a little extra mass. As Tim said, maple is sort of neutral, which is also good.

Just a couple days ago, as per a discussion on the MIMF, I glued up a test "plate" of CF/maple/CF that is incredibly stiff. The jury's out on whether it will sound good or not, but I may pull the plate from a test mule and toss it in to see(hear?) the difference.

Most important aspect of all, is to just keep it to a reasonable size; gads, I see huge plates on to many guitars!Mario38551.9899652778

How about spruce with a small maple patch under the pins Bruce Petros style. I tried this on my parlor and it seems to work well so far. Good volume bass and sustain from a small guitar.

Give Honduran rosewood a consideration...it's the preferred wood for marimba keys and give a very clear tone. I use it often with great results.

[QUOTE=LanceK] John, I have a big piece-o-paduck, i find it to be very brittle. I have used it once for a bridge patch, but have always worried it would split, Is it just this piece I have thats brittle?

PS, hows retirement treating you?[/QUOTE]

So far retirement is kicking my rear end. Lots to do getting the new house ready to live in and the new shop ready to work in.

Re the padouk being brittle, I have not had a problem with that. It is very stiff, very difficult to bend when used as sides, and it seems to me that if some material is both reasonably light and stiff it should make a good bridge plate. Plus, it is fairly inexpensive and very homogenous.

I have used Brazilian Indian and padauk, and tend to use Brazilian mostly. I haven't used maple as I do pinless bridges and thought that maple is used for it's durability with bridge pins. I've never thought of Rosewood as a sound dampener, given its tap tone and what I've read elsewhere about it's properties as back and side wood, and am aiming for complexity/overtones in my guitars. But then again I haven't tried maple. I suppose it depends a lot on the type of guitars you make - I use macassar ebony for bridges as I find that brazilian rosewood ones are too light and wreck the tone of my guitars ( my tops have braces radiused to around 15', but are not "spherical" so this may have something to do with it).

I agree with Tim on as thin as possible but still with enough stiffness to keep the bridge and top with the right forces, but more interestingly is grain direction. I use quatersawn bridgeplates and used to angle the grain at around 45* to the top grain. But having read Frank Ford's views and some discussion on the AG luthiers forum, for the last few guitars I've aligned the grain with the top grain and like the sound that I'm hearing.

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De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

I'm curious about what you mean by aligning the grain with the top grain. Do you make the grain in the bridge plate run front to back? It seems to me that that would be inviting cracks where the string balls hang on the plate. Of course, since you don't use pins that isn't an issue.

Hi Guys,

Have you looked at what Bruce Petros uses? If not, here's his basic approach as I understand it:

He's using a 1/8" thick (or less) SPRUCE bridge plate that has the grain running diagonally (45 degrees to the top plate grain) Then he adds a very small & thin ebony strip glued to that - right under the bridge pins for string ball-end protection. For stiffness he also has a small brace behind the patch spanning between the lower x-brace arms - sort of like Larivee I think.

Anyone else tried this or something similar? I decided to try it on my 1st guitar & it really does sound wonderful - well balanced, loud, and a sweet growling midrange.

Of course that's not a very scientific approach & I don't know what the guitar would have sounded like with a more traditional maple or rosewood bridge patch, so who knows? On his web site, Bruce indicated that it was lighter in weight than the traditional approach & uses a lower mass, better-resonating wood (spruce) than the traditional hardwood approach. That made sense to me so I tried it.

I will use this idea in the future (guitar # 3) but plan to try using a thin strip of bone instead of ebony. Maybe slightly brighter? We'll see.

Skip

The folks who make traditional instruments, i.e. old Martin replicas, will only use maple. Why? Because that's what Martin used, and if you want to duplicate the Martin sound, you have to do what they did.

I don't make traditional instruments, but have used cocobolo and brazilian both with nice results. But I keep my plates thin, and I also use stuff that's been cut off-quarter, and skew the grain so it doesn't run parallel to the pins to eliminate a potential stress crack.

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I don't see the bridge plate as a major contributor to the sound. Obviously it does _something_, since it adds a cross grain patch of hard wood (usually) on the inside of the top, which has to effect the stiffness. It's also adding mass and stiffness (thus, impedance) at the bridge. Still, the exact species or cut should not make a major difference in sound, IMO, so long as the weight and stiffness are similar.

I see the patch as having two functions. One is that it 'balances' the construction of the top in the bridge area, sort of like plywood. I don't think that's a huge consideration, but still.... For me the major function of it is to keep the ball ends of the strings from chewing a hole in the top. For that you want a hard, close grained wood. In addition, the bridge plate does have to take some bending stress, particularly when the bridge lifts. If the plate extends bewond the front or back edges of the bridge it's bending there, too. So you want a wood that won't split in cross grain bending.

'Skew' cut hard maple, with the annual ring lines at 45 degrees to the surface, fills the bill. Either quartered or flat cut wood will have more tendancy to split. Padauk, particularly when it's well quartered, is very stiff across the grain, but won't put up with any bending before it cracks. I used Osage for a while, since it has very high spliting resistance, and it's hard, but it is ring-porous, and if the ball end happens to land on a ring it's not very wear resistant. I don't really like the rosewoods for much the same reason: too porous. Morado/Pau Ferro might be good.

Lately I've been using persimmon; the American ebony. It's about like Macassar in properties, but tends to be grey or white rather than black/brown. It takes about twice the force to split a piece of persimmon that a rosewood piece of the same size will withstand. Major drawback: good luck finding any.   

I don't see the bridge plate as a major contributor to the sound

You're not supposed to see it, only need to hear it <bg>


Alan, Alan, Alan, how can something, right at the point where the energy is tranfered from the string to the soundbox, not affect tone? How? Everything I've ever done to the bridge area of a guitar has changed the tone. Everything. Can I measure it scientifically? Nope, but I still believe the human ear and mind can process subtleties way better than any scientific instrument can. No computer can yet match the human mind's processing power, and none ever will.

There's a whole lot more to an instrument and how it produces tone than 'main air resonance', "A0" modes, nodes, trains, planes, and other such stuff.Mario38552.6413425926

John,

Yes I do mean the bridge-plate grain is parallel to the top grain. I also have a brace immediately behind the bridge connecting to the legs of the X braces as mentioned in another post:


The quotes from Frank Ford can be found here Overall but the two that stuck with me are:
"I do not understand why virtually all makers run the grain direction of bridge plates parallel to the length of the bridge. With the grain running this way the bridge plate can't do its job so well. The function of the bridge plate is to reinforce the top for seating the string balls, and TO KEEP THE TOP FLAT SO THE BRIDGE STAYS IN PLACE. Without a bridge plate, the spruce top would have a much greater tendency to "peel" loose from under the bridge." and:

"If I had my way, guitars would be made with bridge plate grain running parallel to the top grain to avoid the chipping between holes, and the tendency to curl or crack in the direction of the string pull."

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Dave White
De Faoite Stringed Instruments
". . . the one thing a machine just can't do is give you character and personalities and sometimes that comes with flaws, but it always comes with humanity" Monty Don talking about hand weaving, "Mastercrafts", Weaving, BBC March 2010

I like John like to skew the grain, but my bridge plate of choice is Madagascan Rosewood.

Mario:
Did I say it had _no_ effect? Did I ever, anyplace, say I can measure everything about how a guitar sounds? :)

The problem is that any time you change something like the bridge plate on a particular guitar, you _are_ changing all, or most, of the things I measure. Yes, taking off the rosewood bridge and substituting an ebony one will change the tone of a particular instrument, but at least part of that has to do with the different hardness and density of the woods and _the changes that makes in things like the air and top resonance modes_. That's why it's so hard to talk about the 'sound' of a particular wood: there are too many other variables to look at.

Are you saying that the bridge plate is _more_ important in determining the tone than the top wood? The bracing pattern and shaping? The back? Where does the bridge plate rank on the hierarchy? I'd put it pretty low down, and that says it's 'not a major contributor'.

That said, this is a game of details, as I repeat ad nauseum. When you get to the level most of us are working at little things start to loom large. A Brazilian bridge plate might 'make' the tone of one of Mario's guitars, but I doubt it would be much help in some of the junk they are selling at WalMart.

    I agreee fully with Al on where the bridge patch falls in the list of tone contributing components. It's a minor contributor to then overall tone of any guitar. I've used 50 or so different tone woods for bridge plates and have even laminated two thinner pieces of different material with opposing grain patterns to address both reinforcement and the curling and chipping issues with results very similar to those reached with a solid patch material. I've replaced bridge plates with different materials in repair and R&D situations and the change in tone was minimal. The top, its bracing and the voicing performed on them as an integral unit are responsible for the larger majority of the tone of the guitar and then there are the back and sides which contribute their color to the mix. D28s and D18s have their very distinct and expected voices even though both sre dreads and both can be built right next to each other with the back/side material being the only difference. That's where the obviously different contributions of those materials used in backs and sides are most noted.

    I use Brazilian rosewood rift sawn in most of my guitars, but there are times that i prefer Maple. With a very rigid Adirondack top, I like Maple, but with Engelmann, and the European Spruces, I like Brazilian. I do like Blackwood, but who has mcuh off cut lying around of that stuff?

   I run my grain neither paralel or perpendicular to the grain, but at about a 30 degree angle to it. The angle and orientation of the edge grain is important too since the string balls should interface with it to pull it into itself to avoid cracking or minimizing the strength of the piece. The strengthe and weakness of cuts and grain orientation need to be understood no matter what material you're using. Any material can be misused or improperly laid and can present a compromise in the integrity of the entire guitar.

   I'm with Al Carruth.

Regards,
Kevin Gallagher

I guess it all depends on what we consider a major tone change, then.
Take an early 70's D-18, for example, and replace the big EI RW bridge plate with a smaller one of maple, and even if you do nothing else, you will hear a major change in tone. Major here is relative, I guess. No, I can't take a run of the mill Wall-Mart guitar and make it sound like something it isn't by changing the bridge plate, but take a reasoably responsive guitar made of reasonable materials, and make a drastic change at the bridge plate, and you will hear it(as long as the player is capable of getting the most from an instrument, to begin with). The change will be minimal if you try to match the size, mass and stiffness of the one you're replacing, but if you go the other way, yessir, it will change the sound of it.

This is true of pretty well anything on an instrument, no? As you said, Al, and as I always harp, it's all about the details; difference for me is I view every detail as important, and I don't rank any in any which way. To my ears, changing from 2 week old strins to fresh ones is a major tone change. Changing from a 0.8mm plastic pick to a 1.4mm TS is a major tone change. See where I'm going? It doesn't have to be as drastic as a D-28 VS D-18 VS J-200 to be major, in my mind.

Yes, the stiffness and mass of the items is responsible for some of it, maybe much of it, but so are factors less obvious, like how much of the wood's mass is made up of oils, if the fibers are hollow or solid(yes, not all wood fibers are created equal), etc..., not to mention how fast sound travels through the wood itself(Q?). Heck, there's more, I'm sure. I simply don't believe that if we created a plastic item that matched the mass and stiffness of our favorite wood that it sound the same, even if we matched all measurable criteria. Can I prove it, not really, but it is how I feel. I guess, in the end, I just get a little het up when someone asks a question, and the answer is always about stiffness, mass, and modes or whatever. Mebbe I'll just give up and move on when these things arise.

I do like Blackwood, but who has mcuh off cut lying around of that stuff?

I do! <bg> It's simple; juts buy a handful of turning squares, and rip out your own. Stuff saws beautifully. A $10 square will yeild you 4-5 plates, and you can control the grain orientation as you wish....Mario38554.7999768518

Mario wrote:
"Take an early 70's D-18, for example, and replace the big EI RW bridge plate with a smaller one of maple, and even if you do nothing else, you will hear a major change in tone."

Ah, but take that same guitar and replace the big EIR patch with a BIG maple one, and see how much tone change you get! Or reduce the size of the EIR patch. What you've done in your example is _precisely_ to change the mass and stiffness of the patch so much that you've probably swamped whatever effect the different woods would have in and of themselves. :o)

I know all the technoid terminology can be a turn-off, particularly when you're not used to it. Quite frankly (believe it or not) I was quite skeptical about a lot of this at first too. But the fact is that it does work. It's not perfect, it won't give you all the answers and probably never will, but it is sure useful stuff as far as it goes. Maybe you don't need it much if you're mostly interested in copying Martins (and that's a whole complex game in itself!). I would never attempt some of the weird stuff I've done without the ability to at least reasonably predict the outcome in advance.

Al, I used the D-18 "hot-rod" thing because of this line from you:

I don't see the bridge plate as a major contributor to the sound.

See, I used the major change to show you that yes, a simple bridge plate can be a major tone contributor, and you just agreed. And I'll argue day and night that the same size plate, of the same stiffness, mass, etc..., but of different woods, will sound different(if the guitar is responsive enough to begin with, and if the player is capable of getting it out: if the player plays with a nylon pick and just goes "zing zing" on an E chord, forget it...). Same as the slightest change to your car won't make you sit up and go "hmm, that feels way different", it would for the world's best race car drivers, who can feel tire pressure changes down to 1/4 and 1/2 pound(PSI) increments. Hell, most of us drive with tires that are 5-10 pounds low and don't knwo it.

Same with instruments; there are players who's playing style can pull everything out of an instrument, and there are those who can hear it. Then there are those who cannot.....

Back to the plate, it's part of the bridge, in my mind(scary place, that... <bg>), as I see them as a system. With solid pins and nicely fitted slots, the strings are captured solidly fro the saddle right to the string's ball resting tightly on the plate. It all becomes one. I've changed bridges back and forth, on the same guitar, and there's a whole world of difference between woods(and yeah, I keep the mass within a gram or less....), and I've changed bridge plates back and forth(always on the same guitar, as comparing this guitar with that bridge(plate) to -that- guitar with -that- bridge(plate) is less than useless comparisons. That's why we have test mules, no? Between my 3 test mule-mandolins, I have tried over 90 tone bar configurations, for example; priceless information that cannot be ganined any other way...

The technoid stuff isn't a turn off for me; I was an engineer before becoming a sawdust creator, and before that worked in pulp labs, where we chased wood fibers down to sizes that could only be realistically measured using nuclear technology.
Nope, what turns me off if simplifying tone and what produces it down to mass and stiffness; I hate to think that newcomers will overlook their ears because the "numbers" tell them this and that is the same. That would be truly sad, right?Mario38556.6859953704

I would go with a maple plate unless the person getting the guitar likes a
little edgier sound. Maple tends to be more neutral o my ears, and
overall more pleasing, but RW has more zing I think...

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John Mayes
http://www.mayesluthier.com