Bridge blanks

[Martin Jonas]

There has been some mention here recently of a German E-bay seller, Franksmusic. It might be of interest to some here that he also sells rather nice flattop bridges of various designs for very little money. I bought an ebony bridge with bone insert. As shipped, they're about 14mm high, with a 50mm wide bone insert. I've used it for a bouzouki, where it's just fine. For a bowlback, these may also work, but the design may be a bit chunky. Frank told me that he has them made specifically to his specs, so maybe he can help with getting more bowlback appropriate ones as well.

Martin

[Jim Garber]

Martin:
Now, if we can get franksmusic to produce parts for these bowlbacks that would be great. Those wonderful little bridges with the bone inserts -- sort of a companion to the zero frets -- I would be interested.

And if he was able to get some decent quality but not overly heavy tailpieces for the bowlbacks, I would start converting my dollars to euros (not easily done here).

I actually have been contemplating on attempting my first bridge but my tools are not quite adequate. Not sure of my talent either.

Jim

[Martin Jonas]

Martin:
Now, if we can get franksmusic to produce parts for these bowlbacks that would be great. Those wonderful little bridges with the bone inserts -- sort of a companion to the zero frets -- I would be interested.

And if he was able to get some decent quality but not overly heavy tailpieces for the bowlbacks, I would start converting my dollars to euros (not easily done here).

Jim --

As it happens, Frank also sells tailpieces. #These seem to be for waldzithers, citterns, mandriolas and similar beasts only. #I can't see any reason why these can't also be made with eight pegs. #The shape and hole configuration looks about right for bowlbacks.

Martin
PS: Frank takes Paypal, so no conversion of dollars required.

[Jim Garber]

I saw these tailpieces. They look on the heavy side. It is sometimes difficult to figure out how they would look on a smaller instrument. A friend of mine bought a tailpiece from Tony Tsai in Taiwan and when it arrived it was much larger and bulkier than he expected.

Interesting tho... might be worth a look or an email to frank to see what he has.

Jim

[Jim Garber]

I heard from Frank about the tailpieces. He has a couple of german ones , one with 4 posts and one of the std kidneybean ones. The bridges look like they are on the heavy side. They are the ones on eBay at the moment.

I think that handmade bridges seem to be the way to go for our vintage instruments. Just need the time to deal with it.

BTW International Luthiers Supply lists some bridges and tailpieces and I ordered a few of each but they have been backordered with no notion of when they will come in.

Jim

[Martin Jonas]

The bridges look like they are on the heavy side. They are the ones on eBay at the moment.

Jim -- here's a photo of the ebony bridge I got for my bouzouki. I took it down quite a bit and as it's in the photo, the dimensions are: 135mm (L) x 11mm (H) x 6mm (W). Lowering it did make it substantially less chunky, as the tips of the bridge are now sharp, like on many Neapolitan bowls, not blunt.

Martin

[Eugene]

A repairman familiar to many of us, Tom Crandall, has been known to use similar bridge blanks, but they amount to very coarse blanks when he does. To arrive at a functional product, he removes a great deal of material.

[RSW]

I bought a few of these blanks. There is a lot of work involved to reduce the wood to the point where it can actually be used on most bowl back mandolins. On the other hand, there are few of us who can actually craft out a good bridge from the raw material. As for the basic design, well... not my favorite for a number of reasons but if you need a bridge for one of those ebay bargains, or just to experiment with, you could do worse. Incidently, the design does not allow for much compensation, keep this in mind because it will impact the strings that you can actually use.

[Rex]

I got a couple of nice bridge blanks from Elderly Instruments in Michigan, but, again, they needed to taken down some.

[Jim Garber]

Jim -- here's a photo of the ebony bridge I got for my bouzouki. #I took it down quite a bit and as it's in the photo, the dimensions are: 135mm (L) x 11mm (H) x 6mm (W). #Lowering it did make it substantially less chunky, as the tips of the bridge are now sharp, like on many Neapolitan bowls, not blunt.

Martin:
I can't quite tell from the photo. Is that insert made of bone and is it mortised into the base or is it glued permanently into the base?

here are two examples of bridges with the mortised bone insert (the bottom one is missing the insert but you can see how it is made).

Jim

[RSW]

The ones I bought were glued in...I am.assuming that Franksmusic acquires these bridges from the Tawain source.

[Martin Jonas]

They're permanently glued in. The bone insert is about two millimetres wide and the top of the bridge is squared off, with the top of the bone flush with the top of the ebony. I was told it's real bone, and it certainly looks the part, but I haven't done any microscopic inspection to see whether it might be a good substitute.

If you want to make a compensated bridge, you have six millimetres to play with, but only two of them are in the bone; if you want to set a string further back from the front edge, you're in the ebony. Principally, I think the design is meant for straight bridges.

I don't know whether franksmusic gets the blank from Taiwan, but he may well. He told me that he had them custom-made for him specifically, but I don't know how much they differ (if at all) from ones that Tsai has been selling directly.

Martin

[rosincloud]

. . . On the subject of FranksMusic (but not bridge blanks) - I bought one of his brass tailpieces (as an experiment) They are quite large at 96x40mm. for the top 'scalloped' plate, with a slightly radiused 76x40mm heel plate that fits neatly against the #bout of a large bodied instrument (e'g Baz. or Mandola type). I'd have to say that the 8x loop pegs are substantial but very fiddly to string since each string has to negotiate a right angle having passed through the string slot in the tailpiece. (BEWARE - string loops are work hardened where they are twisted off and can easily break . . . esp. 1st string course - as I discovered!!)

#I did want, and was assured by Frank that the tailpiece was 'casted' (sic). However, in construction they are simply 2 sections of 1mm brass plate welded together at approx 95 degrees. Well made but, disappointingly - not what I asked for.

#T.P.

[Martin Jonas]

There's good advice on how to deal with the right angle string breakage problem (which is quite common on many tailpiece designs, not just Frank's) at Frets.com. In short: pre-bend the loops using the conical part of a pencil.

Martin

[Martin Jonas]

There's a little job lot offered by a different seller at Ebay Germany, consisting of two tailpieces and a bridge blank for the grand total of 6.90 Euro including shipping within Europe. He also offers an Embergher set (his description), consisting of tuners for slotted headstocks, two tailpieces (why two??) and bridge blank (different design from the other one, and distinctly peculiar). What may be interesting is that the seller says he'll sell mandolin spare parts in any combination required on request.

Martin

[Jim Garber]

Yes, Martin that bridge is sort of strange but may work nicely. I still lean toward those mortised bridges or at least ones that are replicas of the old ones. I would want one that worked similar to the originals.

I think that the tailipieces that frank is selling may very well be from Toiny Tsai. My friend bought one of his tailpieces and had to have the string anchor silver-soldered since it broke off rather easily.

Jim