ca bridge

[mick pierce]

hi can any one tell me were i can buy a ca bridge in the uk please

[Folkmusician.com]

No idea there, but if you are not able to find one, I can ship one over for you.

[mick pierce]

hi Robert thanks for the offer, i am pretty handy would i be able to fit it myself or is there anything special that needs doing, like sanding it to fit the body .

[Folkmusician.com]

Hi Mick,

There is no reason you can't fit a CA bridge yourself, but yes it is pretty involved to do it correctly. I do the basic foot fitting with sandpaper a scraper and a knife. If it is way off, I start by roughing it out with a spindle sander. The technique for the final fitting of the foot depends on a few factors. Sometimes mandolin tops are not uniform and matching the foot to the top can be tricky. It can also be difficult to compensate for string tension.

Aside from fitting the foot, you may need to remove some wood from the foot and or saddle to get the correct adjustment range.

Cutting accurate string slots is surprisingly difficult until you have done a few. Once you have the slots correctly spaced they need to be filed to match the strings and ramped correctly. You really need the correct files, though you might make do without them.

After all the basic fitting, string it up and check the foot under tension. check your angles and make sure you have the correct adjustment range.

Now at this point it should sound better than any lower quality bridge, but you need to do some tuning to get the most out of it. This gets a little more complicated and requires some idea of the physics of the bridge and probably some past experience. Playing the mandolin, listening, making changes. Some can be done with a tuning fork as well. If this is your first bridge fitting and you don't want to spend days doing it, I would skip any tuning, and just get the best fit you can.

Once you are happy with the fit, pull it back off and clean up the tooling marks, and sand/polish to the desired sheen. :)

Every once in a while everything comes together and I manage to complete a CA bridge upgrade in an hour. It usually takes longer. Doing your first one, I would set half a day aside. If you take your time, it should turn out fine. :)

[Barry Wilson]

I just did my first bridge and half a day is being generous... took me longer hehe. but I checked my results often so I didn't over sand... this time I'm letting a pro do it ;)

[mick pierce]

hi robert thanks for the reply, could you give me some idea of your very best price of the loar 600 set up with a ca bridge please, if you could email me back personally with your very very very best price, ha ha ha cheeky me i would really appreciate it, to mrpierce@hotmail.co.uk regards mick ps + the postage cost please to uk