aluminium bridge

[rico mando]

hey i saw a 1921 or 27 white face gibson model A that had a aluminium bridge on top and wood on the bottom. the dealer said that it was stock and that they were produced like that back then, or so he was told. is this true ? just curious

[sunburst]

Yep.

[mandroid]

Have a '21 A like that .. :grin: It's Brown.

[rico mando]

neat !
he also told me that it really made the mandolin loud /punchy and sound great. but of course he is trying to sell it. i would suppose that if it made an improvement they would be a lot more common. thanks

[mandroid]

I swapped the bridge piece back and forth with my A4,

they didn't really swap sounds

when I swapped the upper bridge pieces..

[Rick Albertson]

I'm pretty sure 21 was the only year Gibson used aluminum bridges. I changed one out on an F4... made no difference in the sound.

[danb]

I've got 22 examples (http://www.mandolinarchive.com/perl/list_mandolins.pl?aluminum) in the archive. Here's a nice photo of one from Banana:

64444

[red7flag]

There was an F4 at Gruhn's I played. I did not particularly like that instrument that sounded very bright to me, but that may have had nothing to do with the bridge. It had sort of sharp sound that I did not really like in an F4. I assumed that it was the affect of the bridge, but having read the previous posts, I was probably wrong.

[Paul Hostetter]

I like aluminium better than aluminum.

[Rick Cadger]

I like aluminium better than aluminum.
So do I.

Blame Websters for the aberrant version in common US usage. ;)

[8ch(pl)]

Dave Appolon suposedly favoured Aluminum topped bridges. His Loar had one, (the one that was in Nova Scotia).

[mrmando]

I have one ... it arrived on a '23 snakehead, but since it was probably not the original bridge I put an ebony bridge on the snakehead instead.

[8ch(pl)]

There is a White Face A-3 in the classifieds with a nice side view photo. Rene from Berlin has it, just came on the classifieds.