Rubber bridges?

7GuildsandanSG

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Interview with a luthier in LA salvaging guitars and making rubber bridges for some well known musicians. Also there is a documentary about him coming out.
 

Canard

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A friend once had a mid-sixties, catalogue purchased, solid-body, Guyatone guitar that was completely unplayable - impossibly high action.

Back in the 70s, I reset the neck angle using a matchbook from the pub where we used to go for a pint or six as a shim - light my fire.

The guitar had a really flimsy adjustable two-piece plastic floating bridge, not at all like an archtop bridge. There was enough vertical adjustment in the bridge to work with the change in neck angle, and the action was great, super low and fast with no fret buzz, but the guitar sounded awful. It was thin and tinny. And the bridge moved easily out of position while playing. There wasn't a lot of string tension over it and it tended to slide around. It might have sat on the big striped sheet of aluminium screwed on the front of the guitar - don't remember.

Anyway, I glued the bridge to a sheet of red rubber plumber's gasket material, trimmed off the excess, roughed up the rubber with some sandpaper, put it back and adjusted it. The guitar was transformed - much better sounding - and the bridge didn't slide around.

A big +1 for rubber (in the right circumstances).
 

Sal

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I like the sound. There's a place for it for sure. I've messed around with rubber picks and a rubber bridge takes it much further.
 

Nuuska

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Makes me wonder what a very thin rubber strip between the saddle and piezo would do - and then what if there were another thin strip under the piezo, too ?

And where does one get suitable rubber? Rubber bands are obviously too thick just like bicycle inner tubes - condomes are too thin - kitchen gloves maybe ? - or other use-once-throw-away products ?
 

Walter Broes

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Good friend of mine bought one of those. It certainly IS different, but very cool and useable. The plunky sustainless sound isn't unlike some traditional far-eastern string instruments (I know embarrassingly little about)
 
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