ksdaddy & others - thinking caps please

[zombywoof]

Although you would think I know better after playing some 45 years I just cannot resist bringing home clunkers that nobody else will give a home to. This time it is a late 1940s Harmony Stella auditorium size guitar. I did not buy it for the way it sounds - just liked the way it looks. Have not seen one of these in a long time. Old body style - made with the Carver-period Stella jigs and old brown burst finish. The snowflakes on the board and "binding" are painted on. About the thickest neck I have ever laid hands on - even beefier than my mid-1930s Kay Krafts. Still in the playable range but just barely.

 

Sound - the low end is chunky. The mids are surprisingly warm and full. The high end is just plain nasty. Sounds like the guitar has a built in echo chamber.

 

The edge of the wood nut where the low E sits was broken off so I rebuilt it with some super glue.

 

But I will need to replace the floating bridge on this sucker. It is pretty well shot. The grooves for the strings are plumb worn out. As a temporary fix I am going to try sanding down the top of the bridge a tad and re-grooving it. But my question is...

 

The bridge is very thin. Would there be any benefit to replacing it with a bridge that has more wood contacting the guitar top?

 

I ain't expecting much out of this guitar other than to have some fun with it. But if there is something easy I could do (I'm not talking shaving the braces here) that will get more out of it than let me in on the secret. Here are some pics.

 

 

[ksdaddy]

My first instinct is that a larger bridge might affect the tone in theory but not necessarily enough to where your ears would pick up on it. I've had a couple conversations with much more learned people about the placement of a sound post in a violin. I was told that on a lower end violin, the placement isn't as critical because of the heavier construction of a student grade instrument. If you shift the post on a higher end instrument, the change will seem more dramatic. Kinda like swapping bridge pins in a J200 versus an LG-0; if there's any change in tone it's more likely to be apparent in the more delicate and refined instrument.

 

So as to changing size/shape on the Stella bridge, I'd just stick with something close to the original. It really has a good balanced look to it right now. If you have some scraps of different species and can rough out a few, I'd experiment with that first. Try making one out of maple, another from rosewood, another from ebony.... just experiment. Don't finish them, just rough them out to size and notch them, then try each one. You may or may not notice any difference in tone. The fact is, you have worn out slots right now so you need a new bridge; if you can easily crank out a few different ones, that will at least erase any doubt a month from now if you should have used a different species.

 

In theory a harder bridge material will allow more efficient energy transfer to the top and (in this case) might bring out the highs that are being lost in the process with the old bridge. All other things being equal, new slots will have a positive effect. The big question is, will it make a difference on a Stella?

 

Cool guitar regardless.

[zombywoof]

Thanks for the help. I do need to replace the bridge and it is a good time to do some experimnenting. The one that is on there is rough wood although I not sure what kinda wood it is. Kinda figured though most of what I could do easily will only be noticed if ya had dog hearing.

 

Funny but a couple of us recently had a conversation about putting a sound post in a guitar. Having played fiddle for years I know that in a violin how close you place the sound post to the bridge is a amtter of top thickness. But we figured if it worked for a violin why not a guitar. Seemed to make sense. So a friend put one in an old Kay mandolin (took a bunch of attempts to make one that fit just using a dowel). The sucker sounded like it was filled with cotton balls.

 

What we concluded was that the violin is a bowed insrument with constant pressure being applied to the strings. A guitar is, of course, plucked with a far greater attack. So we assumed that the top and back in a guitar vibrate about as a good as they are ever going to.

 

Again thanks for the input.

[Red 333]

Thanks for the help. I do need to replace the bridge and it is a good time to do some experimnenting.

 

Maybe a more substantial tailpiece would help focus the sound, too.

 

Red 333