3/16th of an inch

Not 3/16th of a mile in 10 seconds.

Steve Ryder up here in Portland Maine did a phenomenal repair on my M-85. Now I could defy you to find it.

But the E string would not intonate. So I asked him to bore out the harp bridge a bit so I could use the bass live. I just fetched it and he told me he added 3/16" of an inch to the length of the slot. (Been so busy, I haven't even tried it yet.)

But.... now he says the D string is at its max. Damn, now I may have to file that slot out a little myself. (Or just ignore it like I did for so long on the E string.)

Not a bass guy, but I just saw this. I would have to question why the bridge needed to be moved, myself--it doesn't really make sense.

The slots aren't long enough with the bass bridge, I'm assuming?

Chaz said:

Not a bass guy, but I just saw this. I would have to question why the bridge needed to be moved, myself--it doesn't really make sense.

Click to expand...

Bridge looks something like this:



In a perfect world you raise or lower the bridge to set the action then slide the saddles in the slots to fix intonation. In the real world, changing the bridge height will effect where the saddle has to be to be correctly intonated and and that means sometimes there just isn't enough slot. It is not unusual to find the original bridge replaced with something that is easier to adjust and the evidence is that many of those replacements were made very early in the bass' life.

But my understanding is that this seemed to be a somewhat new problem; "But.... now he says the D string is at its max.". I guess he could have just never had the d intonated, though. (I'm personally kind of sensitive to intonation issues, so I generally deal with them very quickly) I guess the bridge could have just been misplaced from the start; Martin was well known for doing that in the 70's.

If it is a new problem, then I would have to question what changed that necessitated moving the bridge saddles so much.

Chaz said:

But my understanding is that this seemed to be a somewhat new problem; "But.... now he says the D string is at its max.". I guess he could have just never had the d intonated, though. (I'm personally kind of sensitive to intonation issues, so I generally deal with them very quickly) I guess the bridge could have just been misplaced from the start; Martin was well known for doing that in the 70's.

If it is a new problem, then I would have to question what changed that necessitated moving the bridge saddles so much.

Click to expand...

It is a common problem with basses sporting the harp bridge. The slot for the E string saddle is just too short. A friend filed out the slot on my other Guild bass just enough to get the intonation close. But Steve added more room on the M-85.

We did not want to try moving the bridge and, in fact, there is not enough room to do so because of the pickup ring. (Perhaps you might be able to with the older, flat ended bridges?)

As Frono noted, the only other "solution" is to lift the action really high to increase the length of the string. I'm too lazy/lousy a player to deal with high action.

Correct intonation has a lot to do with string mass and stiffness. It's possible that the original was adequate for the strings available at the time and not so much with today's strings. Just a guess.

Tangentially the bridge plate in the picture is almost flat on the top. One of the original saddles split and the replacements were custom built and noticeably taller. It is certainly easier to intonate than the other basses with that bridge.