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Carl Thompson Basses And Other Wood Bridges


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Hey there,

Ive notice a few basses with ebony bridges and a bone saddle, But was curious about Carl Thompsons bridges. How do you feel about them? Any interest or insight?? :D I assume you cannot adjust the intonation on the bass? How is the saddle arranged on his basses? I am having trouble finding good pics. Thanks.

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I'm not sure if this is how Carl Thompson does it, but you could do the bridge/saddle like on an archtop guitar; it "floats" on the top (i.e. it is not glued down). You adjust the angle of intonation by loosening the strings, moving the bridge, then tuning up and checking it (repeat as necessary).

I'm going to try this with my NeckThru 5.

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You can certainly make them adjustable. Each string can have its own saddle, like a metal bridge, each sadlle has a rectangular foot print large enough to support string pressure with out "falling over". Each of the saddles sits inside of a routed out channel in the wooden bridge, it can slide either direction within that channel to adjust the intonation. The bridge is glued down, but each saddle is held into the bridge by string tension. For those who like to use different string gauges at different times you could simply have many different saddles to change the action. It would be fairly easy to go ahead and just make a whole bunch of saddles for action adjustments. Each saddle would be the same shape, only sand a bit more off the "footprint" of some. This is the approach that I plan to take in the future- however this would be a pain to use with piezos, so for my current project I am sticking with a single saddle for all the strings.

Peace,

Ryan

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http://www.ctbasses.com/picview.php?src=Aa...woodbridge2.jpg

thats what carl thompson does. he uses a nice dovetail on it.. i got an idea thats based on the idea of individual saddles, but is it a tune o matic scenario, requiring the neck to ba angled? i assume the height of the bridge and the saddles will make it kinda high dont ya think? but yeah he makes some gorgeous stuff. I also read an article on how he has no idea what his wood combos will sound like, he just goes for it. pretty interesting guy too. so are all his necks angled?

thanks

:D

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