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Permalink Reply by Tom Baugues on December 9, 2012 at 3:53am

Hello all, I'm new here working on my first guitar. I hope I'm not stealing some one elses thread however I have a question on this subject. If the measurment of this is so critical, and the placement of the frets must be exact then why isnt the bridge permantly mounted? Seems to me that if the bridge gets moved a small amount then that throws off all other mearsurments. What am I missing?

Permalink Reply by Ron "Oily" Sprague on December 9, 2012 at 4:30am

Reason for the movable bridge is:

1) Unless you are outrageously careful, it is almost impossible to get the notes absolutely perfectly intonated at both the nut, and the 12th fret, with a fixed bridge. Most commercial builders actually don't get it perfectly right, either (hence the need for compensated bridges, as found on most commercial acoustics, and individually adjustable string saddles, as found on most commercially produced electrics). Why? Different scale lengths, string diameters, vagaries of the combination of machine and human eye and feel tolerances during manufacturing, etc. Also, the guitar is not perfectly designed as an evenly tempered, justly intonated instrument; it is always a bit of a compromise. The closest builders have come to evenly tempered, justly intonated gits is to build very strange looking, almost bent, frets, that vary across the fretboard. There are people here who have attempted this, with some success.

2) Having a movable bridge allows you to approximate, with reasonable results, a truly compensated bridge, and approach an acceptable intonation for 3 or 4 strings. You'll notice the bridge will also be angled slightly, to minutely affect the scale length of each individual string. Finally, good players also minutely bend the strings when fretting, adjusting the tone of the note as it is played, to further compensate for tonal inaccuracies. Many players of CBGs cannot hear these subtleties, and many more quite simply like the slightly out-of-tune character of these instruments, in the same way as many people like the sound of a jangly, out of tune piano in old timely Western movies.

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