Bone saddle or solid ebony bridge?

[Timmando]

What are the opinions on the bridges that have the two thumbscrews and a bone saddle? I notice baldassari has one on his mando in his dvd. I also have one on an asian import and I am thinking about buying another one for my monroe. It seems to work pretty good...does anyone swear by them? These are different than the bridges with bone that have no height adjustment. Here is a photo of what they look like

92987

[Fstpicker]

I would suspect that a bone saddle would be brighter sounding than an ebony saddle would be. Could be wrong though. Kind of depends on what sound you are looking for.

Jeff

[Folkmusician.com]

Jeff is correct, bone will give a brighter tone than ebony.

On the MDM-2, the bridge is average (in other words not top grade) for the popular imports. Upgrading the bridge will be the single biggest improvement you can make on it.

The second biggest improvement would be the tone-gard you have there. :)

If the posts line up, you might try swapping saddles between the mandolins to see which you prefer. On most mandolins, the ebony is a better complement.

[Pete Jenner]

You would also gain enormously from fitting the bridge properly. It looks like there is an huge gap under the bass side foot.

[Stephen Cagle]

bone certainly much brighter tone.. top quality ebony bridge such as steve smith (cumberland acoustic) randy wood or now ben wilcox ebony bridge will give a much deeper woodier tone.

[Jim]

I had good results making the saddle for an adjustable brige out of maple.

[Timmando]

Thanks for the info. I did upgrade the top of the bridge on the mdm2, the original cracked. A guy at the summersville festival put a new top on the existing bottom, I guess that is half upgraded at least! And it did sound better. It sounds like most are advising going to a wood one instead of the bone, to get a woodier tone. The bone one sounds pretty good though. I need to try a wood one and go from there....rather than getting another bone one. But just in case, does anyone know where I can buy a bone one like in the photo?

[Mike Black]

I've been messing with the bridge on my main player for years now. At the moment it has an Ebony base with Maple top that has a bone cap on top of the Maple. It does have a brighter cutting sound but still has some nice warmth with the Ebony base.

I also agree with Blackheathan, You really need to have that bridge base fitted better.

[Shelagh Moore]

Gara Nava, who made one of my mandolins, designed a solid bridge to accept replaceable saddles (mainly to help adjust the action) and provided both ebony and bone saddles for me to experiment with. Of these I much prefer the bone saddle but then I use this particular mandolin mainly for Scottish/Irish and classical which usually benefits from more sustain.