Bone Saddle Experiment

Comment

Comment by Kevin O'Connor on February 25, 2012 at 7:24pm

Thanks Andy, but you should hear it now... way better! Still experimenting with designs.

Comment by Ron "Oily" Sprague on February 24, 2012 at 12:43pm

Kevin,

Great work! Glad to see that you've arrived at an optimum saddle solution for this (and hopefully, future) build(s).

Now, about them soundboards... >:-E

Comment by ED (Bad Finger) on February 24, 2012 at 9:37am

My guess is that there is an optimum point between surface area in contact with the saddle and bridge mass.  Increase surface area in contact until overall mass begins to diminish the response.

Comment by Kevin O'Connor on February 24, 2012 at 7:44am

Mark, the 2 piezo's are mounted directly to the bridge plate on the bottom side of it, side by side. I found that my best results came from the real small and thin saddle (shown in the pictures I posted last night), especially if I tilted it slightly so that it was a little less in contact with the bridge plate!

Comment by MBliss on February 24, 2012 at 7:12am

Oh, and glad to see you worked out the uploading thing for such a worthwhile effort too!

Thanks Kevin.

Comment by MBliss on February 24, 2012 at 7:09am

Most interesting and unexpected result! I would be curious as to the location and arrangement of the piezo/piezos, and effect of retesting without the mass of the bridge base, ("saddle" directly on the top.) Probably take you back the other way sound response wise.

It would have been my guess that mass is a factor as long as the saddle is rigid, and the less mass should have a higher response on the treble end of the range, but I wouldnt have expected it to be so obvious. Very interesting!

Comment by Kevin O'Connor on February 24, 2012 at 6:22am

Thank you Steve, had a lot of fun doing this

Comment by Slowpaw Steve T on February 24, 2012 at 2:43am

I've tried bone saddles in the past, they are very sensitive esp. with piezos, neat looking and great sounding build  Kevin! (-:

Comment by Kevin O'Connor on February 23, 2012 at 5:25pm

ANOTHER Saddle design. I made a continuous saddle, no legs or interuptions throughout, a little less mass in reference to the amount of bone in the piece and performed the same test again. This "new" design, in my opinion, has the best sound and tone, it is very sharp and seems to pick up everything exceptionally well and with a nice deep, rich tone. I'm going to clean this one up some, and it will have a new home on my bridge plate! Bye, bye to the legs on this guitar.

Comment by Ron "Oily" Sprague on February 23, 2012 at 1:37pm

Kev,

Looking' forward to it. BTW, that build sounds and looks great, either way. Another thing that I think is contributing to that luscious tone, besides the large volume box, is the size of your sound holes. I think they are just about perfect. Another interesting experiment would be to have soundboards with varying hole sizes. It's my belief you could somewhat tune for frequency content depending on soundhole size, and perhaps also location.

But I wouldn't want to suggest you do a bunch of these (unless you absolutely felt compelled to :-) )

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