i want to change tailpiece on my cheap bouzouki, therefore i need some informations about allen taipieces from members who played instruments with their tailpieces.
which model of your tailpieces you suggest to me: ar 2 or monteleone mr 2 ? i saw that on mr 2 holes are not line in, but it will not bother me .....
any other significant difference between those two models ???? i prefer heavier tailpieces ....... is it mr2 slightly heavier than ar 2?
thanks!
I haven't used an Allen tailpiece, but I did replace the light tailpiece on my bouzouki with a heavier brass one, manufactured in the Far East, and this does make a significant difference to the volume and tone from the instrument. You might want to look there too as a cheaper alternative.
Allen tailpieces are not cheap ! Perhaps you should invest in a better bouzouki instead. What you are doing might be like putting lots of extras on a cheap car, it's still a cheap car, not a Ferrari. I don't know if a heavier tailpiece will make so much improvement on a cheap instrument, but then mine is one of the Korean-made "Ozark" 'zouks, which I would call a mid-range instrument.
I did also fit a Red-Henry-pattern bridge, which I also reckon adds significantly to tone and volume improvement.
Good luck anyway.
thank's for replay pete.....
a lot of truth in your mail......
well, i intend to make bouzouki by myself, but it will take time, therefore i want to improve sound on existing one zouk in meantime....
i also found ashton bailey tailpieces for half of allen prices, so maybe his tailpieces will be my choice ( seems very heavy and i like that...)
thanks for suggestion for red henry bridge, i will check this.....
thanks, marin
Which do you prefer the look of? Because apart from the shape there is very little difference.
There is a slight difference in the radius of the bottom plate - the MR2 has a tighter radius to more or less fit most mandolins, on a bigger bodied bouzouki the AR2 might be closer, but which ever one you choose, expect to have to do a bit of judicious filing to make it fit snugly. Which is one of the reasons I don't paticularly like cast tailpieces, and now make my own Sobell-style ones from sheet brass.
As to the weight, it doesn't matter - they are both far heavier than they need to be (another reason for using sheet brass instead). It isn't the weight of a cast tailpiece that gives the improved tone and volume, it is the rigidity.
" It isn't the weight of a cast tailpiece...."
Well, skreech, I respectfully suggest that that is a matter of opinion, and it's not mine.
I'm sure you've heard of various modifications carried on, particularly in the electric instrument field I allow, using brass or other heavier denser materials to improve tone and sustain. The same principals apply here; if the end of the string is located on a dense and heavy anchor, then the string energy is much more likely to be transferred into energy via the much lighter and more mobile bridge and soundboard.
I will admit to not having taken this principle to an extreme by adding a pound of lead to my tailpiece, but it would be interesting to try, wouldn't it ?
It's not a matter of opinion Pete, it's a matter of physics.
To illustrate that weight has nothing to do with it, imagine you have a block of rubber that weighs exactly the same as your cast tailpiece. Imagine that block of rubber stuck on the back of your bouzouki and the strings tied to it. What is it going to sound like?
You're almost right when you talk about density, but with nuts and saddles it is the hardness that affects the tone and sustain. It just happens that harder materials also tend to be more dense. (although that is not always the case - carbon-fibre components are lighter than bone, but have acoustic properties much closer to brass.)
When it comes to tailpieces, the tailpiece isn't actually transmitting sound to the instrument (the bridge does that) it is simply anchoring the strings. If you have a string tensioned between two completely rigid anchor points, if you pluck it there is nothing other than air resistance and the properties of the string itself to absorb energy, so it vibrates for a very long time. But if one of the anchor points has a bit of 'give' in it, that 'give' acts as a spring/damper combination, absorbs energy from the string, and causes the vibration to die down much faster. Just as the spring/damper combination on your car stops the car from bouncing after you hit a pothole. And high frequency vibrations have less initial energy than low frequencies, so die down faster, which is why a non-rigid mounting affects the tone.
So the key thing about a tailpiece is that it must be rigid, the weight doesn't actually matter. You could take your heavy tailpiece and insulate the strings from it with rubber tubing. The instrument will sound dull because the string anchors are no longer rigid.
The same applies to other parts of the string anchorage system - if you use an allen type tailpiece which will take ball or loop ended strings, you'll hear a marked difference between the two - because the ball gives a rigid anchor, the loop can elongate and relax when the string vibrates, so it absorbs energy. The same thing happens at the other end of the instrument - you'll hear a marked improvement in tone and sustain if you fit high quality machine heads with rigid posts in place of cheap ones with sloppy bushes.
So all in all, the most important thing is to get rid of the awful tinplate tailpiece with its soggy pressed fingers. But as you design your new system and choose components, you need to think about rigidity, not weight.
Well, yes and no...
The tailpiece, and the tuning machines at the other end, SHOULDN'T be transmitting energy to the instrument. But then, how do you explain clip-on tuners ? don't say they are just microphoning from the air, or how can you tune in a noisy environment ?
And then there's the people who dampen the strings beyond the nut, and under the tailpiece, otherwise they get very annoying "wolf" notes or tones on the instrument.
My brass tailpiece also has the anchor pins for the string loops on the bottom ( of the ribs ) of the instrument, so the string then is bent over a brass edge, and goes through a slot under the ornamental part of the tailpiece that stands over, but not on, the soundboard. I don't think elasticity of the string loop plays much part in tone change, after that bend over the brass edge, all under tension. Then I have a small amount of padding under the ornamental part of the tailpiece to absorb and deaden any post-bridge resonances and harmonics.
As to hardness and density; as a follower of the line of thought of Red Henry, I now use a one-piece wooden bridge made from maple, carved and shaped to attempt to optimise the transfer of energy from string to soundboard. This is, after all, the primary objective of any improvements. Red Henry has carried out a considerable number of experiments, using a variety of woods, and it definitely seems that, as well as there being several woods that produce an excellent result, there is also a matter of total weight, and you can have a bridge that is too heavy, but also, intriguingly, one that is too light.
What I would suggest is that maple might be neither the hardest nor the heaviest wood, but obviously its properties seem to be the best. After all, 3 centuries of violin makers can't all be wrong.
Anyway, I'm sure this discussion is not over.
OK, there are a few more misconceptions there. The vibrations your tuner picks up aren't transmitted throught the machine heads. The instrument itself is never perfectly rigid, so when a string vibrates, the neck and body do too - just as the stick of an archery bow bends when you pull the string.
The little cast tailpieces with the stringholders on the ribs are, in my opinion, the best of the commercially available tailpieces, but they still have the disadvantage of using loop ended strings, that is why Stephan Sobell uses a hand sheet brass tailpiece, and I copy him. The advantage those little tailpieces have over the Allen type is that they give you a straight string-pull to the anchor point at the tail of the instrument. The allen style tailpieces are designed to work on archtops, and on a flat top they are too high, so the string meets the tailpiece at an angle, and the string-pull is trying to pull the tailpiece down, reducing rigidity.
Your afterlength damper is there to stop sympathetic vibration of the afterlengths, it has no affect on the sustain or tone of produced by the main string, which produces a longitudinal pull in the afterlength. If there is any give this damps the main string, regardless of whether the afterlength actually vibrates sideways or not.
As to Red Henry bridges, I've never got my head round what they are supposed to do. I did go as far as drawing it out, and it became quite apparent that they cannot behave as violin bridges - because of the proportions the transmission paths don't line up. But would you really want a mandolin bridge that behaves as a violin bridge? The violin and mandolin are completely different instruments. When you pluck a mandolin string you want the string to keep ringing - that means using a rigid bridge that transmits energy to the soundboard, but doesn't damp the string vibration. When you bow a violin, you wnat the sound to stop as soon as you stop bowing. That means having a flexible bridge, that provides a lot of damping to the string.
If you look at the cut of a violin bridge, there are two main features - the 'holes' and the pendulums. The holes aren't important, but the legs that are left between them are. When you tune a bridge, as you cut the holes bigger you are actually making the legs thinner, which makes the bridge more flexible, reducing the sustain and the high frequency transmission, giving the fiddle a rounder tone. But that round tone isn't really what you want from a mandolin - a violin bridge would have exactly the opposite effect on tone to your brass tailpiece.
The pendulums (one in the middle of the heart and one under each eye) act as mass dampers - they attenuate frequencies above about 4KHz. Their sole purpose is to reduce bow-hiss, but that isn't really a problem on a mandolin. So why does a mandolin need pendulums? I'm pretty sure you could produce exactly the same effect that Red Henry gets just by simply increasing the size of the cutaway between the feet of a conventional bridge.
Your argument about 3 centuries of violin making isn't a good one - they have been making plucked string instuments for 3 centuries too - using ebony bridges. And when you get an old master like Stradivari, who made both violins and guitars, and really understood what he was doing, you find he uses sycamore for violin bridges and ebony for plucked strings.
It is true that you can use the bridge to correct tonal deficiencies in an insrument - if you have a mandolin that is too harsh and tinny you can tone it down by using a softer bridge to absorb some of the high frequencies (and I think this is what is happening in Red Henry's experiments) but you do so at the expense of volume and sustain. With a well ballanced instrument the starting point has to be a hard bridge to transmit maximum energy. As an instrument maker, if I made a mandolin and found it sounded better with a maple bridge, I'd make the next one with a thinner top or lighter barring, so that it sounded right with an ebony bridge.
One of the things you need to be very wary of are ideas and gadgets that are claimed to 'improve' the sound of your instrument, whether it is a fancy bridge, special strings, or sticking a snake rattle in your fiddle. All these things will undoubtedly change the tonal properties, but whether that change is an improvement or not will depend entirely on what was wrong with the instrument to begin with. If you have two mandolins, one of which is too bright and tinny, the other is dark and muddy, putting a Red Henry bridge on the tinny one will improve it, but putting the same bridge on the dark one will make it worse. If you want to improve the sound of an instrument, first you have to identify exactly what is wrong with the sound, then find something that cures that specific problem. There is no such thing as a universal cure-all.
Don't know skreech, I've fancied a red henry bridge for a while, for my mandolin, and I think I'll buy a couple of blanks to try out when I'm next of a mind to measure up my bridge (means I've got to be home). The man has put in a lot of R&D time in and if you think about it, as far as mando family instrument go, the bridge is a key component that has received minimal attention regarding experimentation. Their just variations on a 100 year old theme. Nothing radical has happened in that time other than stepping. I think RH one piece bridges are worth a look at $20USD (for a near finished blank).
Simplest non permanent modification you can make on mando or banjo is the bridge.
I agree about being wary of the claims that gadgets can make a difference regarding sound tone etc. From my experimentations with banjo bridges the difference between one bridge and another can be profound. Weight shape number of legs etc all have a huge effect on the sound produced. Just refilling then recutting the slots to minimise the depth can clear up muddy or week tones or fix nagging intonation issues, especially on the shorter scale length instruments, mandolin.
How much time is spent setting up this side of an instrument before it leaves the maker or shop? Not enough IMO unless your spending large or have an instrument that has been subjected to some quality TLC before you buy it and even then you'll still need to maintain it.
I'd certainly encourage you to experiment with bridges. What I am saying is that is is pointless just buying a commercial item that claims it will make your instrument "better". If you are going to use your time productively, first you need to decide what aspect of your instruments sound needs changing to make it "better", then look at how you need to change the bridge design to make that change.
What you say about lack of development might possibly be true of cheap factory instruments, but it certainly isn't with hand-mades and top end factory instruments. At that end of the market you can be sure that the maker has put a lot of thought into making your instrument sound as good as possible, and the bridge he fits will be what he considers to be the best match for the rest of the instrument. Of course, your idea of how the instrument should sound might differ from the maker's, and in that situation changing the bridge may well help you achieve the sound you want. But you have to decide what aspect of the sound you want to change, then fettle a bridge to achieve that change. It makes absolutely no sense to stick on a random bridge and just assume it is going to make it sound "better" without having first defined what you mean by "better".
Talking specifically about Red Henry, his theory about why the cutouts need to be shaped like a violin bridge make no sense in terms of physics and acoustics (which is a good thing - if you had a bridge that really worked like a violin bridge, you'd have a mandolin that sounded like a violin being plucked.) But I can see that there is an end result - putting one of his bridges on will ceretainly make your instrument sound different - both the use of maple and the cutouts (of any shape) serve to make the bridge more flexible, which will reduce the high frequencies and make the instrument sound smoother and less bright, but at the expense of volume and sustain. You can't have both, that's down to the laws of physics.
I certainly agree with you, skreech, that it's the wood that's left and its mechanical functions that matter in a Red Henry bridge, or a violin bridge, not the shape of the holes in between.
I have now made about 10 bridges, trying out ideas gleaned from Red Henry, before I got the most satisfying one to date. When the weather warms up again I might get back out in the back garden to make some more sawdust and see if I can't do even better.
I certainly feel that it's worth having a go - you can do it all with a fret-saw, a drill, and some sandpaper, or go a bit more mechanised if you want. I think I've spent £5 on two small blocks of maple, sawn down to thickness, and I've still got lots left. Hours of fun.
And the bridges found on 'F' model mandos simply can't be the best way of transferring string energy to the soundboard; ebony/brass/ebony, must be wasting energy at each junction. I reckon the development guys brought the prototype up to the boardroom, explaining away the bridge by needing an adjustable one till they had the action sorted out, and the Chairman just said "Love that bridge !" so they had to keep it.
But now Red Henry has this new design, just lots of holes bored through.
Haven't tried one of those yet, wait till the spring.
PS; of course a mando doesn't sound like a fiddle plucked, it doesn't have a soundpost. The bow energy goes straight to the back, and is reflected back through the soundbox, whereas a mando depends on the soundboard itself for tone, and the box for volume.
But cutouts reducing the high frequencies - NO WAY ! My daughter leaves the room when I'm practising, my 'zouk is so loud and bright, which is what makes it so good for sessions. For song accompaniment I have to use a very light floppy pick and action to reduce volume. Can't stick a sock in the back like on a banjo !
Ah yes Pete, I would certainly recommend ditching the adjustable Gibson style bridge on most archtops - with those things you are losing energy and compromising sound quality just for the sake of adjustability. Replace that with something solid and you've got more energy to play with, so you can decide what sort of sound you want and use a rigid or flexible bridge to achieve it.
But we started off talking about bouzoukis, so I assumed we were talking about flat tops, which start off with solid bridges, so there is nothing to be gained overall, all you can do is trade off high frequency content against overall volume and sustain.
The soundpost of a violin sits (or should if it's properly adjusted) at a nodal point on the soundboard, so it transmits very little vibration to the back plate. It's main function is simply to support the front and stop it collapsing under the string tension. (The reason that the soundpost position affects the tone so drastically is that if you don't get it spot on that nodal point, then it does transmit vibration to the back, and in doing so saps energy out of the front). The main damping factor on the violin is the bridge - you can prove it to yourself very simply by putting a string lifter in and raising the strings off the bridge, then pluck a string. The relatively rigid string lifter gives a marked increase in volume, and lengthens the sustain considerably.
Just as a matter of interest, if you don't think cutouts reduce high frequencies, what affect do you think they do have? ie. what do you think you are gaining by using them?
first of all ,thanks pete and skreech on first place for your comments ( ok, it was mostly debate beetween you two....)
i learnt a lot from your comments and now i understand little more functions of bridge and tailpiece, although both or you have opposite views on same things ........
in general, it helps me. a lot ...
p.s.skreech, unfortunatelly i haven't aproach to many bouzoukis, expecially sobell's , therefore i haven't proper template to try to make Sobell-style tailpiece from sheet brass.
if you want to sell me one of yours tailpieces, i could send you a pm to make deal ......
marin
Aha - cutouts !
I think firstly the cutout changes the total volume and density of the bridge, and directs the energy down a specific and indirect path (s ), rather than just having a whole block vibrating. Also, the use of two feet rather than a solid base means that both; some areas of the soundboard can vibrate freely without anything pressed against them, and also that the feet of the bridge have a higher contact pressure against the soundboard, giving a more efficient energy transfer.
There is definitely a paper written somewhere regarding why fiddle bridges are shaped as they are, and what they do, and even though a Red Henry bridge is much flatter than a fiddle bridge I believe some of the same principles apply. I'll try to find the reference.
PS; I'm sure a Sobell-type tailpiece made from thick brass sheet would be excellent - I just don't have the facilities and materials to work with myself, plus, I like my Far Eastern brass one with the mother-of-pearl inserts, and keep it polished bright.
PPS Anyone know when Duraglit became Brasso ? I remember when they were distinct and different companies, the one did the liquid, and the other made the impregnated cotton-wool stuff.
Yes, there have been a number of papers in The Strad about the dynamics of the violin bridge, the way it works is now fairly well understood. At the bridge soundboard interface having two spearate feet is essential - the bridge rocks from foot to foot and imparts a transverse wave into the soundboad between the ff holes. Presumably the same thing happens with anff hole mandolin. But with a flat top mandolin things work in a completely different way. With a round soundhole and transverse bars like a lute (an instrument I've done a lot of research on) the soundboard can't vibrate transversely, but is free to vibrate longitudinally (with the transverse bars at nodal points). In that situation the pest transmission (ie greatest volume) occurs with a bridge that is in contact with the soundboard continuously across at least width of the soundhole. However, there are other considerations - with a flat bottomed bridge, if the curvature of the soundboard changes with humidity, the bridge no longer fits properly, so you can land up with an instrument whose qualities change from day to day. And cutting away and arch to leave two feet also gives you something that you can adjust to balance the strings, rather than having to fit odd gauges. So some makers fit flat tops with flat bottomed bridges, some with footed bridges.
Footed bridges aren't unique to Red Henry, they are very standard. What I'd be interested in seeing is a rational explanation for the cutouts further up the bridge. Although they look sort of similar, the changes in geometry mean that it cannot 'behave like a violin bridge' as Red Henry claims (nor would you want it to, for reasons I've explained earlier).
If you look at a violin bridge it is essentially a horizontal beam holding the strings, a horizontal beam resting on the feet, and a V shaped structure between the two. Enlarging the eyes narrows the point of the V, allowing it to rock more, thus absorbing energy and reducing high frequencies and the sustain that you don't want on a violin (but do on a mandolin).
The key point about a violin bridge is that that central structure is V shaped. But on a Red Henry bridge is is widened out into a trapesoid, which is inherently stable and won't rock - the string bearing beam will be held parallel to the foot beam pretty much as rigidly as with a solid bridge. So why bother with the cutouts?
Looking at the ends of the bridge, on the violin bridge you have the pendulums down the outside of the eyes, with a lump of wood on the end under the eye. These act as mass dampers, and during the setup process they are tuned to cut frequencies over about 4KHz. But on the RH bridge they are very thick and stiff, with no additional mass at the end - their resonant frequency is going to be way above the audiable range. So why bother having them?
In short RH bridges cannot work in the way that he claims, but they do make a difference. I'd love to know if they are doing something different to a solid bridge, or whether the difference is simply down to the difference in flexibility, and could be just as easily obtained by changing the thickness or wood type of the bridge.
Well, I have one disagreement with your statement, as my 'zouk has X-braces, not transverse bars, so another explanation is needed there.
If you look at the original "best" bridge design Red Henry came up with, it too has a horizontal beam supporting the strings, with free outside ends which could well function as the pendulums or mass dampers you describe - had a look at the Millenium Bridge lately ? That now has mass dampers to cure its oscillations.
Then two pillars connect that to the two-footed base.
Do fiddle bridges really rock from foot to foot? I would love to see a demonstration of that.
I must send you a picture of my four-footed bouzouki bridge too.
The simple explanation is that your zouk shouldn't have X bracing, unless it has a fixed bridge like a Joe Foley.
The X brace was developed in guitars specifically to work with the torsional loadings of steel strings on a fixed bridge. It isn't designed for the vertical loadings of a floating bridge.
I did an experiment a couple of years ago on a cheap Eastern OM. The reason for doing it was thatthe X braced the top had sunk to the point where it was concave and the instrument was useless. I rebarred it with traditional transverse bars and not only did the soundboard hold its curvature, but there was a very noticable improvement in the volume and tone - instead of just getting the twang that you expect from strings on a plywood box, it developed a really strong bass response. I put some photos of the process here:
It's not the best explanation I've see, but it is available online. If you can find a good explanation of how to tune a violin bridge, that will almost certainly explain what each component does and how.
Incidentally, in case you think the manufacturers know what they are doing, and used X bracing for a reason, take a look at my photo of the original bracing. See the bridge plate - a lozenge of 3/16" ply where the bridge sits? What on earth is that doing there? On a guitar the bridge plate is there to stop the ball ends of the strings chewing into the soundboard. But on an instrument with a floating bridge? It shows that they have simply copied guitar X bracing into the OM, without any thought whatsoever as to how it works.
And then you have to wonder what difference putting separate feet on the bridge is going to make, if the surface it is sitting on is a completely ridgid lump of plywood.
allen tailpieces
allen tailpieces
i want to change tailpiece on my cheap bouzouki, therefore i need some informations about allen taipieces from members who played instruments with their tailpieces.
which model of your tailpieces you suggest to me: ar 2 or monteleone mr 2 ? i saw that on mr 2 holes are not line in, but it will not bother me .....
any other significant difference between those two models ???? i prefer heavier tailpieces ....... is it mr2 slightly heavier than ar 2?
thanks!
# Posted on January 26th 2011 by maracirac
Re: allen tailpieces
I haven't used an Allen tailpiece, but I did replace the light tailpiece on my bouzouki with a heavier brass one, manufactured in the Far East, and this does make a significant difference to the volume and tone from the instrument. You might want to look there too as a cheaper alternative.
Allen tailpieces are not cheap ! Perhaps you should invest in a better bouzouki instead. What you are doing might be like putting lots of extras on a cheap car, it's still a cheap car, not a Ferrari. I don't know if a heavier tailpiece will make so much improvement on a cheap instrument, but then mine is one of the Korean-made "Ozark" 'zouks, which I would call a mid-range instrument.
I did also fit a Red-Henry-pattern bridge, which I also reckon adds significantly to tone and volume improvement.
Good luck anyway.
# Posted on January 26th 2011 by Guernsey Pete
Re: allen tailpieces
thank's for replay pete.....
a lot of truth in your mail......
well, i intend to make bouzouki by myself, but it will take time, therefore i want to improve sound on existing one zouk in meantime....
i also found ashton bailey tailpieces for half of allen prices, so maybe his tailpieces will be my choice ( seems very heavy and i like that...)
thanks for suggestion for red henry bridge, i will check this.....
thanks, marin
# Posted on January 26th 2011 by maracirac
Re: allen tailpieces
Which do you prefer the look of? Because apart from the shape there is very little difference.
There is a slight difference in the radius of the bottom plate - the MR2 has a tighter radius to more or less fit most mandolins, on a bigger bodied bouzouki the AR2 might be closer, but which ever one you choose, expect to have to do a bit of judicious filing to make it fit snugly. Which is one of the reasons I don't paticularly like cast tailpieces, and now make my own Sobell-style ones from sheet brass.
As to the weight, it doesn't matter - they are both far heavier than they need to be (another reason for using sheet brass instead). It isn't the weight of a cast tailpiece that gives the improved tone and volume, it is the rigidity.
# Posted on January 26th 2011 by skreech
Re: allen tailpieces
" It isn't the weight of a cast tailpiece...."
Well, skreech, I respectfully suggest that that is a matter of opinion, and it's not mine.
I'm sure you've heard of various modifications carried on, particularly in the electric instrument field I allow, using brass or other heavier denser materials to improve tone and sustain. The same principals apply here; if the end of the string is located on a dense and heavy anchor, then the string energy is much more likely to be transferred into energy via the much lighter and more mobile bridge and soundboard.
I will admit to not having taken this principle to an extreme by adding a pound of lead to my tailpiece, but it would be interesting to try, wouldn't it ?
# Posted on January 27th 2011 by Guernsey Pete
Re: allen tailpieces
It's not a matter of opinion Pete, it's a matter of physics.
To illustrate that weight has nothing to do with it, imagine you have a block of rubber that weighs exactly the same as your cast tailpiece. Imagine that block of rubber stuck on the back of your bouzouki and the strings tied to it. What is it going to sound like?
You're almost right when you talk about density, but with nuts and saddles it is the hardness that affects the tone and sustain. It just happens that harder materials also tend to be more dense. (although that is not always the case - carbon-fibre components are lighter than bone, but have acoustic properties much closer to brass.)
When it comes to tailpieces, the tailpiece isn't actually transmitting sound to the instrument (the bridge does that) it is simply anchoring the strings. If you have a string tensioned between two completely rigid anchor points, if you pluck it there is nothing other than air resistance and the properties of the string itself to absorb energy, so it vibrates for a very long time. But if one of the anchor points has a bit of 'give' in it, that 'give' acts as a spring/damper combination, absorbs energy from the string, and causes the vibration to die down much faster. Just as the spring/damper combination on your car stops the car from bouncing after you hit a pothole. And high frequency vibrations have less initial energy than low frequencies, so die down faster, which is why a non-rigid mounting affects the tone.
So the key thing about a tailpiece is that it must be rigid, the weight doesn't actually matter. You could take your heavy tailpiece and insulate the strings from it with rubber tubing. The instrument will sound dull because the string anchors are no longer rigid.
The same applies to other parts of the string anchorage system - if you use an allen type tailpiece which will take ball or loop ended strings, you'll hear a marked difference between the two - because the ball gives a rigid anchor, the loop can elongate and relax when the string vibrates, so it absorbs energy. The same thing happens at the other end of the instrument - you'll hear a marked improvement in tone and sustain if you fit high quality machine heads with rigid posts in place of cheap ones with sloppy bushes.
So all in all, the most important thing is to get rid of the awful tinplate tailpiece with its soggy pressed fingers. But as you design your new system and choose components, you need to think about rigidity, not weight.
# Posted on January 27th 2011 by skreech
Re: allen tailpieces
Well, yes and no...
The tailpiece, and the tuning machines at the other end, SHOULDN'T be transmitting energy to the instrument. But then, how do you explain clip-on tuners ? don't say they are just microphoning from the air, or how can you tune in a noisy environment ?
And then there's the people who dampen the strings beyond the nut, and under the tailpiece, otherwise they get very annoying "wolf" notes or tones on the instrument.
My brass tailpiece also has the anchor pins for the string loops on the bottom ( of the ribs ) of the instrument, so the string then is bent over a brass edge, and goes through a slot under the ornamental part of the tailpiece that stands over, but not on, the soundboard. I don't think elasticity of the string loop plays much part in tone change, after that bend over the brass edge, all under tension. Then I have a small amount of padding under the ornamental part of the tailpiece to absorb and deaden any post-bridge resonances and harmonics.
As to hardness and density; as a follower of the line of thought of Red Henry, I now use a one-piece wooden bridge made from maple, carved and shaped to attempt to optimise the transfer of energy from string to soundboard. This is, after all, the primary objective of any improvements. Red Henry has carried out a considerable number of experiments, using a variety of woods, and it definitely seems that, as well as there being several woods that produce an excellent result, there is also a matter of total weight, and you can have a bridge that is too heavy, but also, intriguingly, one that is too light.
What I would suggest is that maple might be neither the hardest nor the heaviest wood, but obviously its properties seem to be the best. After all, 3 centuries of violin makers can't all be wrong.
Anyway, I'm sure this discussion is not over.
# Posted on January 27th 2011 by Guernsey Pete
Re: allen tailpieces
But, back to the original question......
# Posted on January 27th 2011 by Guernsey Pete
Re: allen tailpieces
OK, there are a few more misconceptions there. The vibrations your tuner picks up aren't transmitted throught the machine heads. The instrument itself is never perfectly rigid, so when a string vibrates, the neck and body do too - just as the stick of an archery bow bends when you pull the string.
The little cast tailpieces with the stringholders on the ribs are, in my opinion, the best of the commercially available tailpieces, but they still have the disadvantage of using loop ended strings, that is why Stephan Sobell uses a hand sheet brass tailpiece, and I copy him. The advantage those little tailpieces have over the Allen type is that they give you a straight string-pull to the anchor point at the tail of the instrument. The allen style tailpieces are designed to work on archtops, and on a flat top they are too high, so the string meets the tailpiece at an angle, and the string-pull is trying to pull the tailpiece down, reducing rigidity.
Your afterlength damper is there to stop sympathetic vibration of the afterlengths, it has no affect on the sustain or tone of produced by the main string, which produces a longitudinal pull in the afterlength. If there is any give this damps the main string, regardless of whether the afterlength actually vibrates sideways or not.
As to Red Henry bridges, I've never got my head round what they are supposed to do. I did go as far as drawing it out, and it became quite apparent that they cannot behave as violin bridges - because of the proportions the transmission paths don't line up. But would you really want a mandolin bridge that behaves as a violin bridge? The violin and mandolin are completely different instruments. When you pluck a mandolin string you want the string to keep ringing - that means using a rigid bridge that transmits energy to the soundboard, but doesn't damp the string vibration. When you bow a violin, you wnat the sound to stop as soon as you stop bowing. That means having a flexible bridge, that provides a lot of damping to the string.
If you look at the cut of a violin bridge, there are two main features - the 'holes' and the pendulums. The holes aren't important, but the legs that are left between them are. When you tune a bridge, as you cut the holes bigger you are actually making the legs thinner, which makes the bridge more flexible, reducing the sustain and the high frequency transmission, giving the fiddle a rounder tone. But that round tone isn't really what you want from a mandolin - a violin bridge would have exactly the opposite effect on tone to your brass tailpiece.
The pendulums (one in the middle of the heart and one under each eye) act as mass dampers - they attenuate frequencies above about 4KHz. Their sole purpose is to reduce bow-hiss, but that isn't really a problem on a mandolin. So why does a mandolin need pendulums? I'm pretty sure you could produce exactly the same effect that Red Henry gets just by simply increasing the size of the cutaway between the feet of a conventional bridge.
Your argument about 3 centuries of violin making isn't a good one - they have been making plucked string instuments for 3 centuries too - using ebony bridges. And when you get an old master like Stradivari, who made both violins and guitars, and really understood what he was doing, you find he uses sycamore for violin bridges and ebony for plucked strings.
It is true that you can use the bridge to correct tonal deficiencies in an insrument - if you have a mandolin that is too harsh and tinny you can tone it down by using a softer bridge to absorb some of the high frequencies (and I think this is what is happening in Red Henry's experiments) but you do so at the expense of volume and sustain. With a well ballanced instrument the starting point has to be a hard bridge to transmit maximum energy. As an instrument maker, if I made a mandolin and found it sounded better with a maple bridge, I'd make the next one with a thinner top or lighter barring, so that it sounded right with an ebony bridge.
# Posted on January 27th 2011 by skreech
Re: allen tailpieces
One of the things you need to be very wary of are ideas and gadgets that are claimed to 'improve' the sound of your instrument, whether it is a fancy bridge, special strings, or sticking a snake rattle in your fiddle. All these things will undoubtedly change the tonal properties, but whether that change is an improvement or not will depend entirely on what was wrong with the instrument to begin with. If you have two mandolins, one of which is too bright and tinny, the other is dark and muddy, putting a Red Henry bridge on the tinny one will improve it, but putting the same bridge on the dark one will make it worse. If you want to improve the sound of an instrument, first you have to identify exactly what is wrong with the sound, then find something that cures that specific problem. There is no such thing as a universal cure-all.
# Posted on January 27th 2011 by skreech
Re: allen tailpieces
Don't know skreech, I've fancied a red henry bridge for a while, for my mandolin, and I think I'll buy a couple of blanks to try out when I'm next of a mind to measure up my bridge (means I've got to be home). The man has put in a lot of R&D time in and if you think about it, as far as mando family instrument go, the bridge is a key component that has received minimal attention regarding experimentation. Their just variations on a 100 year old theme. Nothing radical has happened in that time other than stepping. I think RH one piece bridges are worth a look at $20USD (for a near finished blank).
Simplest non permanent modification you can make on mando or banjo is the bridge.
I agree about being wary of the claims that gadgets can make a difference regarding sound tone etc. From my experimentations with banjo bridges the difference between one bridge and another can be profound. Weight shape number of legs etc all have a huge effect on the sound produced. Just refilling then recutting the slots to minimise the depth can clear up muddy or week tones or fix nagging intonation issues, especially on the shorter scale length instruments, mandolin.
How much time is spent setting up this side of an instrument before it leaves the maker or shop? Not enough IMO unless your spending large or have an instrument that has been subjected to some quality TLC before you buy it and even then you'll still need to maintain it.
# Posted on January 27th 2011 by Solidmahog
Re: allen tailpieces
I'd certainly encourage you to experiment with bridges. What I am saying is that is is pointless just buying a commercial item that claims it will make your instrument "better". If you are going to use your time productively, first you need to decide what aspect of your instruments sound needs changing to make it "better", then look at how you need to change the bridge design to make that change.
What you say about lack of development might possibly be true of cheap factory instruments, but it certainly isn't with hand-mades and top end factory instruments. At that end of the market you can be sure that the maker has put a lot of thought into making your instrument sound as good as possible, and the bridge he fits will be what he considers to be the best match for the rest of the instrument. Of course, your idea of how the instrument should sound might differ from the maker's, and in that situation changing the bridge may well help you achieve the sound you want. But you have to decide what aspect of the sound you want to change, then fettle a bridge to achieve that change. It makes absolutely no sense to stick on a random bridge and just assume it is going to make it sound "better" without having first defined what you mean by "better".
Talking specifically about Red Henry, his theory about why the cutouts need to be shaped like a violin bridge make no sense in terms of physics and acoustics (which is a good thing - if you had a bridge that really worked like a violin bridge, you'd have a mandolin that sounded like a violin being plucked.) But I can see that there is an end result - putting one of his bridges on will ceretainly make your instrument sound different - both the use of maple and the cutouts (of any shape) serve to make the bridge more flexible, which will reduce the high frequencies and make the instrument sound smoother and less bright, but at the expense of volume and sustain. You can't have both, that's down to the laws of physics.
# Posted on January 27th 2011 by skreech
Re: allen tailpieces
I certainly agree with you, skreech, that it's the wood that's left and its mechanical functions that matter in a Red Henry bridge, or a violin bridge, not the shape of the holes in between.
I have now made about 10 bridges, trying out ideas gleaned from Red Henry, before I got the most satisfying one to date. When the weather warms up again I might get back out in the back garden to make some more sawdust and see if I can't do even better.
I certainly feel that it's worth having a go - you can do it all with a fret-saw, a drill, and some sandpaper, or go a bit more mechanised if you want. I think I've spent £5 on two small blocks of maple, sawn down to thickness, and I've still got lots left. Hours of fun.
And the bridges found on 'F' model mandos simply can't be the best way of transferring string energy to the soundboard; ebony/brass/ebony, must be wasting energy at each junction. I reckon the development guys brought the prototype up to the boardroom, explaining away the bridge by needing an adjustable one till they had the action sorted out, and the Chairman just said "Love that bridge !" so they had to keep it.
But now Red Henry has this new design, just lots of holes bored through.
Haven't tried one of those yet, wait till the spring.
# Posted on January 27th 2011 by Guernsey Pete
Re: allen tailpieces
PS; of course a mando doesn't sound like a fiddle plucked, it doesn't have a soundpost. The bow energy goes straight to the back, and is reflected back through the soundbox, whereas a mando depends on the soundboard itself for tone, and the box for volume.
But cutouts reducing the high frequencies - NO WAY ! My daughter leaves the room when I'm practising, my 'zouk is so loud and bright, which is what makes it so good for sessions. For song accompaniment I have to use a very light floppy pick and action to reduce volume. Can't stick a sock in the back like on a banjo !
# Posted on January 27th 2011 by Guernsey Pete
Re: allen tailpieces
Ah yes Pete, I would certainly recommend ditching the adjustable Gibson style bridge on most archtops - with those things you are losing energy and compromising sound quality just for the sake of adjustability. Replace that with something solid and you've got more energy to play with, so you can decide what sort of sound you want and use a rigid or flexible bridge to achieve it.
But we started off talking about bouzoukis, so I assumed we were talking about flat tops, which start off with solid bridges, so there is nothing to be gained overall, all you can do is trade off high frequency content against overall volume and sustain.
The soundpost of a violin sits (or should if it's properly adjusted) at a nodal point on the soundboard, so it transmits very little vibration to the back plate. It's main function is simply to support the front and stop it collapsing under the string tension. (The reason that the soundpost position affects the tone so drastically is that if you don't get it spot on that nodal point, then it does transmit vibration to the back, and in doing so saps energy out of the front). The main damping factor on the violin is the bridge - you can prove it to yourself very simply by putting a string lifter in and raising the strings off the bridge, then pluck a string. The relatively rigid string lifter gives a marked increase in volume, and lengthens the sustain considerably.
Just as a matter of interest, if you don't think cutouts reduce high frequencies, what affect do you think they do have? ie. what do you think you are gaining by using them?
# Posted on January 28th 2011 by skreech
Re: allen tailpieces
first of all ,thanks pete and skreech on first place for your comments ( ok, it was mostly debate beetween you two....)
i learnt a lot from your comments and now i understand little more functions of bridge and tailpiece, although both or you have opposite views on same things ........
in general, it helps me. a lot ...
p.s.skreech, unfortunatelly i haven't aproach to many bouzoukis, expecially sobell's , therefore i haven't proper template to try to make Sobell-style tailpiece from sheet brass.
if you want to sell me one of yours tailpieces, i could send you a pm to make deal ......
marin
# Posted on January 28th 2011 by maracirac
Re: allen tailpieces
Aha - cutouts !
I think firstly the cutout changes the total volume and density of the bridge, and directs the energy down a specific and indirect path (s ), rather than just having a whole block vibrating. Also, the use of two feet rather than a solid base means that both; some areas of the soundboard can vibrate freely without anything pressed against them, and also that the feet of the bridge have a higher contact pressure against the soundboard, giving a more efficient energy transfer.
There is definitely a paper written somewhere regarding why fiddle bridges are shaped as they are, and what they do, and even though a Red Henry bridge is much flatter than a fiddle bridge I believe some of the same principles apply. I'll try to find the reference.
# Posted on January 28th 2011 by Guernsey Pete
Re: allen tailpieces
PS; I'm sure a Sobell-type tailpiece made from thick brass sheet would be excellent - I just don't have the facilities and materials to work with myself, plus, I like my Far Eastern brass one with the mother-of-pearl inserts, and keep it polished bright.
PPS Anyone know when Duraglit became Brasso ? I remember when they were distinct and different companies, the one did the liquid, and the other made the impregnated cotton-wool stuff.
# Posted on January 28th 2011 by Guernsey Pete
Re: allen tailpieces
Yes, there have been a number of papers in The Strad about the dynamics of the violin bridge, the way it works is now fairly well understood. At the bridge soundboard interface having two spearate feet is essential - the bridge rocks from foot to foot and imparts a transverse wave into the soundboad between the ff holes. Presumably the same thing happens with anff hole mandolin. But with a flat top mandolin things work in a completely different way. With a round soundhole and transverse bars like a lute (an instrument I've done a lot of research on) the soundboard can't vibrate transversely, but is free to vibrate longitudinally (with the transverse bars at nodal points). In that situation the pest transmission (ie greatest volume) occurs with a bridge that is in contact with the soundboard continuously across at least width of the soundhole. However, there are other considerations - with a flat bottomed bridge, if the curvature of the soundboard changes with humidity, the bridge no longer fits properly, so you can land up with an instrument whose qualities change from day to day. And cutting away and arch to leave two feet also gives you something that you can adjust to balance the strings, rather than having to fit odd gauges. So some makers fit flat tops with flat bottomed bridges, some with footed bridges.
Footed bridges aren't unique to Red Henry, they are very standard. What I'd be interested in seeing is a rational explanation for the cutouts further up the bridge. Although they look sort of similar, the changes in geometry mean that it cannot 'behave like a violin bridge' as Red Henry claims (nor would you want it to, for reasons I've explained earlier).
If you look at a violin bridge it is essentially a horizontal beam holding the strings, a horizontal beam resting on the feet, and a V shaped structure between the two. Enlarging the eyes narrows the point of the V, allowing it to rock more, thus absorbing energy and reducing high frequencies and the sustain that you don't want on a violin (but do on a mandolin).
The key point about a violin bridge is that that central structure is V shaped. But on a Red Henry bridge is is widened out into a trapesoid, which is inherently stable and won't rock - the string bearing beam will be held parallel to the foot beam pretty much as rigidly as with a solid bridge. So why bother with the cutouts?
Looking at the ends of the bridge, on the violin bridge you have the pendulums down the outside of the eyes, with a lump of wood on the end under the eye. These act as mass dampers, and during the setup process they are tuned to cut frequencies over about 4KHz. But on the RH bridge they are very thick and stiff, with no additional mass at the end - their resonant frequency is going to be way above the audiable range. So why bother having them?
In short RH bridges cannot work in the way that he claims, but they do make a difference. I'd love to know if they are doing something different to a solid bridge, or whether the difference is simply down to the difference in flexibility, and could be just as easily obtained by changing the thickness or wood type of the bridge.
# Posted on January 28th 2011 by skreech
Re: allen tailpieces
Well, I have one disagreement with your statement, as my 'zouk has X-braces, not transverse bars, so another explanation is needed there.
If you look at the original "best" bridge design Red Henry came up with, it too has a horizontal beam supporting the strings, with free outside ends which could well function as the pendulums or mass dampers you describe - had a look at the Millenium Bridge lately ? That now has mass dampers to cure its oscillations.
Then two pillars connect that to the two-footed base.
Do fiddle bridges really rock from foot to foot? I would love to see a demonstration of that.
I must send you a picture of my four-footed bouzouki bridge too.
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by Guernsey Pete
Re: allen tailpieces
The simple explanation is that your zouk shouldn't have X bracing, unless it has a fixed bridge like a Joe Foley.
The X brace was developed in guitars specifically to work with the torsional loadings of steel strings on a fixed bridge. It isn't designed for the vertical loadings of a floating bridge.
I did an experiment a couple of years ago on a cheap Eastern OM. The reason for doing it was thatthe X braced the top had sunk to the point where it was concave and the instrument was useless. I rebarred it with traditional transverse bars and not only did the soundboard hold its curvature, but there was a very noticable improvement in the volume and tone - instead of just getting the twang that you expect from strings on a plywood box, it developed a really strong bass response. I put some photos of the process here:
http://gallowaystrings.co.uk/OM.html
If you want pictures of violin bridge dynamics, there are some here:
http://www.wseas.us/e-library/conferences/2010/Iasi/AMTA/AMTA-07.pdf
It's not the best explanation I've see, but it is available online. If you can find a good explanation of how to tune a violin bridge, that will almost certainly explain what each component does and how.
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by skreech
Re: allen tailpieces
Incidentally, in case you think the manufacturers know what they are doing, and used X bracing for a reason, take a look at my photo of the original bracing. See the bridge plate - a lozenge of 3/16" ply where the bridge sits? What on earth is that doing there? On a guitar the bridge plate is there to stop the ball ends of the strings chewing into the soundboard. But on an instrument with a floating bridge? It shows that they have simply copied guitar X bracing into the OM, without any thought whatsoever as to how it works.
And then you have to wonder what difference putting separate feet on the bridge is going to make, if the surface it is sitting on is a completely ridgid lump of plywood.
# Posted on January 30th 2011 by skreech
Re: allen tailpieces
But meanwhile, back to the original question.......
Good discussion on the way though.
# Posted on January 31st 2011 by Guernsey Pete