This bridge is equally at home on a premium custom build that requires the finest components available, or an existing instrument that has not yet reached its potential! Our bridges are CNC machined from a solid billet of stainless steel and then lovingly hand finished to an attractive satin sheen. Essentially, we found our bridge to produce an increase in volume and resonance without sacrificing the inherent tone of the guitar. In practice, we have observed an increase in vitality on instruments that are otherwise lackluster and an enhancement on even the best specimen we tested. Since it is essentially twice the thickness of a factory stamped ash-tray bridge, there is an increase in sustain and an emphasis on the fundamental note not present with a traditional stamped bridge. After exhaustive testing of a wide variety of materials and thicknesses on various instruments of different types, we determined our current offering is the optimal tonal solution for any T-style guitar.

Because of our more robust construction, there is no loss of sustain or tone as with vintage-style toploader bridges!Īs with all our parts, tone is a primary consideration. Strings can be routed through the body or toploader style to yield different tension characteristics on each string. In case any of you are wondering about the bridge (or any of his work), my experience suggests 'go for it!' Here is a link to pictures.This is the updated and refined version of our acclaimed T-style bridge! We’ve relieved the sides into an elliptical shape to facilitate picking and added a hybrid toploader/string through capability. Mission accomplished! It is still an Esquire, which I love, but now it can shade into other tonal territory as well. While evacuated during the Thomas fire, I had a chance to visit Ron Thorn (a great guy as well as a great luthier and inventor) and he installed one of his new brass knuckle bridges and a P-90 style pickup he designed. Because I play such a variety of music, I have been looking for a way to thicken and fatten the tone. The thing that is great about it is also its limitations. Currently my favorite guitar to play by far! I love the fat neck! It is all a matter of how it sounds, and as an Esquire, of course, it is fantastic but limited in certain ways.

I just posted this on a Kelly guitar thread in 'small company luthiers.' Basically I am saying I like the brassknuckle a lot. I find myself retuning a guitar (especially a 24.75) on the fly, depending on what key the song is in, and/or moving up or down the fretboard to find a sweeter place to put a passage/phrase in the song. Lots and lots of guitarplayers instinctively go easy on that fretted note that's liable to be pulled sharp, and they may even 'detour' around certain positions on certain strings and not even notice what they've done. With a 6 string 25.5 scale electric, conventional fretboard, there's inherent issues that are bred in. And then there's adaptive ways of playing a guitar that just about completely disguises the inherent potholes of intonation. I think Intonation is an art, and some guitarsmiths can get a guitar there when others can't. You have to sometimes compromise the way you want the setup to be, to get close enough on the intonation and some guys refuse to compromise on those things.

I found, the further from those specifications I got, the harder it was to get decent intonation without the slanted or faceted or eccentric slotted saddles. If the radius is 7.25 and if the fret wire size is small and if the string gauge is something like 12-52, wound G (and of course the brand and type can affect things) and if you happen to like the saddle fairly high, yes, you can get those 'straight' saddles to intonate pretty well.

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