Sounds like you missed the part where you’re going to contribute to the costs involved, JustTim and I said “owned”. I don’t have them all any more. Only the fenders I have have multiple bridges available that screw into the same holes and the only one that I changed, I no longer have the stock bridge for. Hilariously, it went to a guy who was taking off his BadAss 2, to sell it because he was convinced that it did nothing but add weight. He was the first guy who seemed happy to admit that he couldn’t hear any difference.
You’ll note that high mass bridges aren’t necessarily cheap. however I don’t see anyone nominating me to do the study, wanting to contribute to the costs.
I have a Mexican Jazz standing by for when another stock bridge turns up to start the ball rolling, but you’ll note that I was also alluding to manufacturers, who make money from high mass bridges having all the incentive to claim “increased sustain” but no numbers to back it up.
The goal here is to get you all thinking along the lines of “why are people never questioning this stuff?” rather than me needing to convince people with a study.
Musicians are people based on tradition. It’s bad enough me trying to convince musicians who don’t have an engineering bent to look at Youngs Modulus charts for string materials so that they can understand why strings go dead.
Forget trying to prove that something makes no difference when cognitive bias then lets individuals decide for themselves that there is one.
There is no sustain windmill. There’s just a lot of people willing to accept that “other people” can tell the difference when they can’t.
Once you learn about cognitive biases and how they rule our lives and decisions, you’ll question an awful lot of stuff that you do every day.
That does depend on what sort of person you are though.
We have had this conversation before.
I believe general concensus was that nobody really cared since the vast amount of even remotely modern bass building has been done with construction practices that have eliminated this as an issue.
As far as anyone testing this, @terb posted before and after videos with a regular bent metal bridge and a high mass bridge to let people make up their own minds.
As for marketing fluff… that’s what we are here to help with.
In defense of my new Kickass bridge, the original angle iron bridge has those two screws providing lateral stability to the saddles are a joke, the saddles aren’t brass. And adjustment is meh.
With the Kickass, it provides for more lateral stability of the saddle, the strings sit in the saddle better, the saddles are brass, and the setup is much easier. I personally find them easier to setup and intonate than the old fashioned Fender.
I would have been happy with a Wilkinson but none were readily available, and the Gotoh was pricey. Kickass was not pricey right now. And the added weight has a bonus of curing neckdive from the honking Fender headstock they put on everything.
Fender, you can buy better but you can’t pay more™
And it’s a light bass anyway. In my opinion, there are reasons you might want a a himass bridge. Sustain just isn’t, or rather shouldn’t be, one of them.
Banjo too, nothing I like more than making that banjer ring.
I am making myself learn guitar now and find myself fighting against the sustain, I know it is what people like and it seems to hide a myriad of sins but I just keep trying to stop it.
On a somewhat related note, I want to know the forum software used by BassBuzz and the server OS on which it runs. If nothing else, they certainly do add to thread sustain!
