Brige Placement

[Baron Collins-Hill]

well, after 2 years of hacking away at mandolining, i brought my 6 month old fm62se to a "lesson" of sorts. the guy i was playing with said that my intonation was off and plopped my brdge back a few ticks. it changed the tone of my mandolin more than i could ever have imagined.

just thought id put that out there

[abram]

it didn't change your tone, but it likely made it possible to play in tune

[Bill Snyder]

The position of the bridge does effect both intonation and possibly tone. After all were you pick effects tone.

[mandroid]

there is only one proper placement. equal to 0 to 12th fret, for the E, bridge compensation adjusts the others, as required,

[sunburst]

I believe ya!
I've noticed tone improvements in mandolins that I've "tuned" the bridge on.
I usually have to cut the bridge to fine tune the intonation because the saddle, as supplied, cannot be exactly right for each mandolin and each set of strings.

Here's what I think is going on:
When the intonation is as close as possible, the harmonic modes of the strings get closer to the tempered notes that you are fretting and thereby improve the tone through more complementry overtones.