Official Luthiers Forum!

Has anyone ever used Bubinga for a bridge. I am thinking about it for a bubinga guitar. ANY / All comments appreciated!

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Dave Bland

remember...

"If it doesn't play in tune...it's just pretty wood"

Pretty heavy. Maybe it would work if you thinned it down or somehow took some area off it.

Make one up and see what it weighs, 25 grams or less is what I aim for usually with BRW. As far as sound transmission is concerned, from memory, in our sound transmission tests, bubinga was only just below EIR so it should work fine, but only if the moving mass can be kept down as Paul said.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Bubinga's not THAT heavy. The mass range that's apparently the norm for the stuff is 850-900kg/m3, which, compared to brazilian and EIR isn't that far off (both in the 750-900kg/m3 range). So unless you've got a lighter-end-of-the-spectrum piece of BRW, I don't know how big a difference it'll make.

Some of you guys are using snakewood bridges, and comparing my pieces of snakewood to my bubinga, the snakewood is a lot heavier.

Haven't used either.
Ron

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OLD MAN formerly (and formally) known as:

Ron Wisdom

Somewhere in the middle of Arkansas......

Hey Colin,

If you ever go back into the sound transmission testing process again, please test a chunk of Katalox (Swartzia cubensis.) That seemed to me to be the best of the woods I got from southern Mexico. Kind of *rings* like BRW, but with less resin in the wood, I wonder if it actually dampens less (and transmits better) than BRW.

Dennis

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Dennis Leahy
Duluth, MN, USA
7th Sense Multimedia

I almost always use BRW because of its relatively low weight for its amount of stiffness. Some classical builders such as Smallman are now using Padauk as it is lighter than even BRW.

I do agree that Katalox is a good alternative wood. Martin is now experimenting with it and recently used it on fingerboard and bridge of the Sting signature series 5 which was built with eco-friendly woods. Katalox is a very nice wood that also can be sustainably harvested.

For those that were at the ASIA Symposium, the Sting guitar was the small body Terz guitar at the Martin table. That one was one of four prototypes that were built for Sting's acceptance, one of which went to Sting, one Sting stipulated went to his manager, one went on the road as was at NAMM, and the other is now part of the permanent collection at Martin.