Carbon Fibre Bridge!

[stevie]

Hi, Has anybody here tried a carbon fibre biscuite bridge,
if so whats your impression.

[Michael Messer]

Call me old fashioned, but John Dopyera & the gang used boxwood to make bridges & biscuits for National guitars in the 1920s & 30s. I do not believe that any innovations since those early days have improved the performance of a resonator guitar. What is there to improve on? The only goal now (IMO) is to make guitars as good as those early ones.

As a wood bridge/biscuit ages, it improves and the sound gets warmer and better. Carbon fibre is a very good material for certain things and it has been used in musical instruments for many years with some good results. But it cannot mellow and change with age. It is what it is.

I have played a couple of resonator guitars with carbon fibre bridges and I don't think it did the guitars any favours.

Others may have a different opinion, but that is how I see it.

Shine On
Michael.

[pascal]

I do agree with Michael, carbon fibre is good enough for custom cars not for instruments...
Many luthiers tried it without any major improvement.

[melp]

Hi Stevie,

Yes I have. I like messing about with guitars and decided to try a carbon fibre just to see what it was like.

The one I got, from the US, was very well made out of, apparently, high quality materials.

First, I fitted it to my MM Blues, with 16-59 nickel Newtone strings. What happened to the tone? Well, it was a bit louder, bit more sustain and certainly not a unpleasant overall tone.

I would say that it increases the clarity of the note.

But, yes you knew one was coming, it did not change the tone of the MM Blues in any really positive was, even with the advantages mentioned.

It sort of sounded more "normal guitar like" than with the NRP maple biscuit. It just seemed to loose, in my view, a lot of its character.

So the carbon biscuit was taken out of the Blues. Next it went into my Busker Canon. Same result, but it did produce quite a nice clean tone, maybe some would say a bit too clean for a resonator.

It did stay in the Canon for a bit, but I finally put the NRP maple biscuit back.

So now its in my spares box.

In conclusion I would agree with Michael and Pascal, in the end it did not do the guitars any favours, I preferred the NRP maple buscuit.

I did make some before and after sound clips web.me.com/melproudfoot/Mels_Stuff/Carbon_Fibre_Biscuit.html

As I have found before you do not get whole effect in these clips, the differences are much more pronounced in the flesh, but hope they are of some use.

Cheers

Mel

[percythewonderant]

I did much the same thing as Mel.

I was trying to achieve a cleaner tone on a biscuit bridge Dobro. Having put in a whole new assembly and getting the height about right, I left it for a couple of weeks, to settle, whilst playing it constantly to help the process. Nothing changed.

Due to growing dissatisfaction I then spent an age fiddling about with it. Eventually I fitted a compensated bone nut. I even thought about brass!

After a year or so eventually even I realised that although the volume was good, the sound that I wanted was still being compromised by the materials.

Despite my self declared, though not always obvious, dedication to modernity, eventually I came to the same conclusion as Melp.

Mine is in my spares box too!

The happy conclusion to the story is that I having replaced the original rosewood, (Balsa?), capped saddle with solid maple I eventually solved the 'muddy sound' problem that I was trying to fix. I also found that lighter strings (13 - 56's), drive the cone differently and achieve an even cleaner and britghert tone, although they took a bit of getting used to.

* I don't mean by this that it sounded like a maroon tele!

[bluesdude]

Yup me too! both my Duolian and Triolian had them on. I was getting
some weird overtones with the pickups I had stuck to them, they
defiantly make the guitar louder(like a 34 Duo needs to be louder!)
as ragged and warped the 70 year old biscuits look I put tham back on!

Kenny,