Official Luthiers Forum!

Time for me to act like a newbie again. To date I have always used EIR for
my bridgeplates. Why...who knows.
I need a primer on bridge plate materials. I know some use maple. Some
use brazillian. What are the main differences? Does it really contribute to
the tone or is it just a structural support?

TIA

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Andy Z.
http://www.lazydogguitars.com

Andy, I've successfully used three kinds, sycamore maple, maple in the Martin Kit, and my favorite to date, black walnut.

In the pipe, I have some more walnut, sycamore, and one McKnight sent me Osage Orange.

Lighter is better for tone, tougher is better for wear, and some of the exotics maybe a nice selling point, such as cocobolo or brazilian.

My guess is three identical guitars and only that one difference, it'd be hard to tell.

All I can say is I really like the black walnut, it's worked well with the Adirondack Red Spruce bracing.

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

I always use European maple, but as I also add a thin veneer of bone where the string end fit I am tempted to try just using a spruce plate.

Many blame the deterioration of the Martin sound from them switching from a maple plate to a rosewood one from 1968-1988. They went back by popular demand.

I know some swear by Padauk or Osage orange.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Ive used Padouk on cedar, dont know if it made a differnace, but it sounded nice. I like to use BRW on redwood tops and maple on Spruce. I do this -only- because I have had nice sounding guitars with these combos and I dont want to rock the boat

Also, I thin my plates to around .050.
LanceK39105.5445601852

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Lance@LuthiersForum.com

Padouk here

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JJ
Napa, CA
http://www.DonohueGuitars.com

I like maple because it's tough and doesn't chip the way tropical
hardwoods can. Once you get the pins fitted, swabbing the bridge pin
holes with thin CA (allow it to dry of course) will toughen the maple plate
even more.

And, I may be the first to have gone on record a couple of decades ago
insisting that all the guitar manufacturers orient the grain in the wrong
direction.   I believe bridge plate grain should be parallel to top grain.
After all, 100 percent of the strain is in that direction, thanks to the pull
of the strings, and I've seen countless bridge plate failures where the
plate cups, and allows the bridge to pull off or crack more easily.

Oh, and as to Martins with the reputation for poor sound because of the
bridge plate - it isn't the material, but the size of the plate in question.
For some reason they not only changed to rosewood (to use scraps, I'm
sure) but they increased the area covered to more than double the
original. Just to add insult to injury, the orientation of the grain
perpendicular to the top meant that the huge bridge plate provided
almost no extra reinforcement against the tendency of the bridge to "roll"
with the pull of the strings when subjected to heat stress, or to crack
along the line of the pins.

Cheers,

Frank Ford
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Frank Ford39105.536400463

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Cheers,

Frank Ford

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Thanks Frank
Interesting
Is anyone putting bridge plates on as Frank has suggested???

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Andy Z.
http://www.lazydogguitars.com

Thanks Frank thats really interesting! Thats alot to chew on.
Cheers
Charliewood

Honduran Rosewood Baby!

Blake

Another nod toward Padouk.

Steve

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From Nacogdoches...the oldest town in Texas.

http://www.stephenkinnaird.com

The problems I used to see with bridge plates when I did more repair were wear that allowed the wraps of the strings to come up over the saddle as the ball ends chewed up soft plates, and splitting along the line of holes when the bridges pulled up. Thus I tend to use the hardest, and most split resistant woods I can. Padauk splits too easily, and walnut is too soft, IMO. I used Osage for a while there, but it's ring porous, and if the ball end goes on a soft line it will wear. These days I use persimmon, which is about as hard as Macassar ebony, as tight grained as maple, and takes about twice as much force to split as any other wood I've tested. Skew cut wood resists splitting better than quartered, although it is much less stiff across the grain, as you know. I try to keep the weight and stifness of the bridge plate down, leaving it full thickness only between the saddle line and the pin holes, and tapering it off on the front and back edges to make them more flexible. I've seen guitars with crosswise creases in the tops at the front edges of thick bridge plates, so I want that to flex a bit. I must confess to not having tried Frank's suggestion yet; but it should work.

I was asking about grain orientation of the bridge plate during the four-week building course I took with Sergei de Jonge. He said he would not run the plate's grain in the same direction as the top's, because he believes one of the important roles of the bridge plate is to stabilize the cross-grain movement of the top in the area of the bridge, so that the bridge-to-top glue joint doesn't fail. In his opinion, if you didn't sandwich the top between two cross-grain layers (the bridge above and the plate below), you'd have a lot more bridges popping off. Makes sense to me.

What do you think about that?

Note of disclaimer: I am paraphrasing my recollection of my conversation with Sergei here... you can quote ME on this, but please don't quote HIM on this!

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

[QUOTE=Alan Carruth] Thus I tend to use the hardest, and most split resistant woods I can. These days I use persimmon, which is about as hard as Macassar ebony, as tight grained as maple, and takes about twice as much force to split as any other wood I've tested. [/QUOTE]

Al, after persimmon, what would be your second and third choices, please?

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Todd Rose
Ithaca, NY

https://www.dreamingrosesecobnb.com/todds-art-music

https://www.facebook.com/ToddRoseGuitars/

[QUOTE=Todd Rose] ISergei de Jonge. . . said he would not run the
plate's grain in the same direction as the top's, because he believes one
of the important roles of the bridge plate is to stabilize the cross-grain
movement of the top in the area of the bridge, so that the bridge-to-top
glue joint doesn't fail. In his opinion, if you didn't sandwich the top
between two cross-grain layers (the bridge above and the plate below),
you'd have a lot more bridges popping off. Makes sense to me.

What do you think about that?
[/QUOTE]

Well, I consider Sergei to be a terrific guitar builder, a hell of a craftsman,
and a friend. But, if he DID say that, I think he's come up with the single
most unlikely cause of bridge looseness.

In my experience, bridges come loose most commonly in a peeling action
of the top bending under the bridge. The bridge plate can serve to keep
the top flat in that area, but I can't imagine how the top swelling or
shrinking could do anything but bend the bridge lengthwise a bit. It
would have to be a mighty poor glue joint to fail brecause of "cross grain
movement," I think. Wood glue in a joint like this has incredible shear
strength compared to peel strength.

Cheers,

Frank Ford
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Cheers,

Frank Ford

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I used maple and EIR but i'm still learning and can't really hear a difference yet, i'll retry maple next time. Great informative thread, thanks guys!

Great thread! Question,maybe a dumb one, is a skew cut mean off quarter half way to a slab cut? Oh and I second the question on second hardest wood to persimmon? Clinton

So, in the grain orientation question, the issue would seem to be whether the top bellying -- which of course leads to bridge lifting -- is better resisted by the cross-grain orientation, which is a longer span, between the x-brace legs, or the parallel orientation, which is only the width of the plate. Seems like either one could be the stiffer of the two. Hmmmmmm. Sounds like the makings of an experiment.

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now known around here as Pat Foster
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http://www.patfosterguitars.com

I'm using Padouk on my current build.Very good
thread guys!

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Anderson Guitars
Clearwater,Fl. 33755

    I to am a fan of maple but after reading FRANK's posting , I have to ask ,as anyone tried Hickory Hornbeam or ELM. As for spliting , elm is maybe the toughest wood for fighting spliting. Hornbean often called ironwood didn't earn that reputaion for nothing. Last but not least is Hickory. This is often a tight grained and yet light wood that is very tough.
    I just may have to try these in the future
john hall
blues creek guitars

I love BRW for bridge plates. Maple is nice, but I just like to use brw.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

I've use Padouk, rosewoods of various sorts and Maple and have decided I like Maple the best but of course my ladder guitars use spruce although I put on a small patch of snakewood for the pegs to go thru and also for a small added amount of mojo

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Tickle your guitar daily, and it'll tickle you back.

I appreciate all the comments. I particularly like Frank's comment about using Cyanoacrylate Super Glue to harden the drilled bridge pin holes.

I watched Frank take a new Buffer buff and cyano the inside area. After it hardened he took a tap of the thread size he wanted and threaded the buff on the inside, then screwed the buff on the very end of the shaft to protect guitars from the shaft threads. Amazing.

So, I'm adding a cyano bath to the bridge pin holes from now on including the bridge plate where the ball ends tend to chew up the most. Great idea. It would be easy to treat the surface of the bridge prior to gluing into the top. Then all you have to do blind is the hole itself. That would sure toughen things up in a definite location of wear.

John Hall, great idea on the alternative woods, I was considering some of those too. Matter of fact, I went through my Paxton's Wood Booklet, Art and Science of Wood and found some others. Here they are, based on hardness and fineness of grain. Of course I've seen lots of variation, so any woods would have to be picked out for this bridge plate job.

African Blackwood
Purpleheart
White Oak
Persimmon, just as Al said, it falls in the category
Snakewood, that was a surprise
Sapele, marginal kind of like walnut
Birch
Bois D'Arc, Osage Orange
Bubinga, now I know what to do with all those scraps
Hickory
Hornbeam
Imbuia
Claro Walnut kind of beats out Black Walnut
Brazilian Rosewood, although the density is close to Indian Rosewood, I'm sure it depends on the piece in hand.....

Those looked promising according to the categories of density and fineness of grain.Bruce Dickey39105.9905208333

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http://www.dickeyguitars.com

Interesting to see Birch in there.

Thanks Bruce.

Lots off folks have used the "hobby ply" made from birch - either 3 or 5
layers 1/8" thick. Not a bad choice, but I still like the stiffness of having all
the grain oriented parallel to string pull to avoid cupping.

FF

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Cheers,

Frank Ford

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