There is a French luthier named Mike Sabre who has hit upon what he calls a fretless bridge, mostly designed to appeal to bassists. Each string has a hardwood (ebony?) saddle with four height adjustment screws, one in each corner. Easier to see than describe:
Fretless bassists pride themselves on their ability to make a sound where the string is just barely buzzing against the neck - the technical term for this is the "ROWR", go to basstalk.com if you don't believe. So this bridge is designed to adjustably rowr at the bridge end. The design is a collaboration between Sabre and Dominique De Piazza, a French monster bassist. It's going on his signature bass:
But Sabre is selling them in both 4 and 5 string versions, 245 and 265 Euros respectively. He's also designed a "sitar guitar" for Yannick Robert (?) with this same bridge idea:
I first heard of him because of the airline-overhead-compartment-sized guitar he built for John McLaughlin:
And a somewhat-sister model he made for mandolin terrorist U. Srinivas, McLaughlin's foil in the Remember Shakti band:
He's definitely not just some kid fooling around. He's got one bridge design that will fit directly over a Fender bridge plate, with no additional drilling. It's easy to see that he's using helicoil inserts in the saddles. It is patented too, :icon_scratch: but I would take that to mean you can't profit from it. What's weird to me is that I'm using helicoil inserts to hold the pickup plates on my next one, because you can relocate or change out the pickups just by cutting a new plate. And I just saw this now...
they're beamin' them in...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyCH70FODJA&feature=related
Fretless bassists pride themselves on their ability to make a sound where the string is just barely buzzing against the neck - the technical term for this is the "ROWR", go to basstalk.com if you don't believe. So this bridge is designed to adjustably rowr at the bridge end. The design is a collaboration between Sabre and Dominique De Piazza, a French monster bassist. It's going on his signature bass:
But Sabre is selling them in both 4 and 5 string versions, 245 and 265 Euros respectively. He's also designed a "sitar guitar" for Yannick Robert (?) with this same bridge idea:
I first heard of him because of the airline-overhead-compartment-sized guitar he built for John McLaughlin:
And a somewhat-sister model he made for mandolin terrorist U. Srinivas, McLaughlin's foil in the Remember Shakti band:
He's definitely not just some kid fooling around. He's got one bridge design that will fit directly over a Fender bridge plate, with no additional drilling. It's easy to see that he's using helicoil inserts in the saddles. It is patented too, :icon_scratch: but I would take that to mean you can't profit from it. What's weird to me is that I'm using helicoil inserts to hold the pickup plates on my next one, because you can relocate or change out the pickups just by cutting a new plate. And I just saw this now...
they're beamin' them in... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qyCH70FODJA&feature=related
