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I was going to ask which bridge to put on a sitka/sapele guitar that I want to rock out and blow away the banjo I play with, but I knew before typing the subject that I want rosewood.

However, what about a redwood/walnut guitar.
I don't even know what to expect in terms of tone from either of the woods in this box so don't know where to start with the bridge.

Does anyone have any recommendations or experience with a redwood/walnut instrument?
(please note that I realize I could build it any way I want and tune it however I please based on a lot of factors and desired results. The tops on these guitars were deflection tested and tuned as identically as possible. I could put a rosewood bridge to preserve the integrity of the experiment, but if someone thinks that the ebony would be a better or worse choice I'd love to know about it before putting the time into the wrong hunk of wood.)

thanks

Dave Livermore

Generally speaking, ebony is more dense than rosewood (and there are variations of each species to account for too) so a bridge of identical sizes will have different damping effects on the vibration of the top. That's your first consideration IMO.

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Dave my friend what Rod said about the dampening of ebony is really the biggest consideration that you have.

Here is a Redwood/EIRW guitar that I used an ebony bridge on mostly because I wanted some repetition of color with the ebony fret board and head stock overlay. Although ebony makes a fine bridge I think that rosewood would have made a better bridge IMHO. And again because rosewood is less dampening than ebony.

The next time I am building and need a black bridge I am going to consider African Blackwood as an alternative to ebony.

But millions of guitars have been built with ebony bridges and although perhaps, again IMHO....., not optimum as far as low dampening ebony works and looks great.

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Ann Arbor Guitars

Thanks guys,
I get the dampening thing. Sometimes that's desireable, especially if a bright top needs to be toned down.

Redwood probably doens't need any toning down on the bright side of things so rosewood it is.

Thanks for the replies.

Dave

there was a big thread on stuff like this ages ago, it went into some detail about the dampening of each wood though

IIRC ebony was very dampening, whereas the rosewoods and similar stuff were less dampening, Maccassar ebony also fell into this catagory, u could try that? get the best of both worlds maybe?

then again, if u get a really nice bit of wood, it doens't matter what it is, it will sound good

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If you want the ebony look with a rosewood bridge, how about dyeing the rosewood?

Rosewood usually has way bigger pores vs ebony so it may look the same color if you dye it but it won't look the same as far as the structure of the wood goes.

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