Compton Bridges

[The Dead Ranch Hands]

Anyone use one on a jazzmaster? Looking to upgrade the bridge on my JMJM and these seem like they might be great.

Back in the day I did have a Compton bridge on a Resoglass guitar build with Jazzmaster pickups. It worked great. They're really high quality bridges. They are intended for unwound G strings, as I recall.

[antisymmetric]

I've whipped up my own for my old Jansen Jazzman using the original thimbles and posts. (Not too pretty, just "proof of concept"). Setscrews in the sides to lock to the posts. My best analogy for the sound difference over the original bridge would be that this one's like a more sensitive microphone- you can just brush your fingers over the strings and it'll pick up everything. Intonation seems ok, I shaped this bridge to match the saddle positions on the original bridge. The old bridge isn't going back on, and when I finally get my JM built, one-piece is the way I'll be going.

Did an early morning double take as this looks like the one I knocked up in my garage for my Hofner verithin!

Do you think the extra mass compared to a regular Bigsby rocker makes any difference?

Not sure, as I've never tried the Bigsby bridge, but I'm sure the amount and type of metal make a difference. My 2 Commodores both have fairly substantial chromed brass bridges (one a roller, one more like a Tru-arc) and they both just ring out. I used aluminium on the Jazzman because I had some and it's easy to work with, but some experiments with different metals would be cool. From memory, the bridge on theJazzman made a distinct difference over the original, but shortly after doing that I also added a big lump of brass as an inertia block under the trem, and that added loads more "presence". Behind-the-bridge strum went from plinky to almost harp-like. I've become kind of big on solid string coupling- substantial bridges with as few pieces as possible (especially when there's not much break angle), nice weighty trems, frets anchored solidly into the board, all that good stuff.

[wproffitt]

I’m reviving this one!

Antisymmetric does the bridge in that picture rock at all? If so, how did you accomplish this? Of not, how do you feel about the way it interacts with your trem? Do the strings scrape over the bridge or go out of tune with trem use?

[antisymmetric]

It rocks- the original bridge was a rocker, and I used the posts and thimbles from it to make what I have now. The only issue is that sometimes when tuning up, the windings of the string being tuned might grab the bridge and move it a bit against the other strings ( I guess this could happen on any rocking bridge) Once it's tuned up, it stays in tune and the bridge glides nicely with the trem.

[wproffitt]

It rocks- the original bridge was a rocker, and I used the posts and thimbles from it to make what I have now. The only issue is that sometimes when tuning up, the windings of the string being tuned might grab the bridge and move it a bit against the other strings ( I guess this could happen on any rocking bridge) Once it's tuned up, it stays in tune and the bridge glides nicely with the trem.

Thanks for showing me that! I’m getting a wonderfully stupid idea: I could install regular JM thimbles and grind down the posts I currently have so that they would rock freely in that space. I have plenty of spare posts if it doesn’t work out!

[antisymmetric]

^Excellent, please post your results!