Anyone use Bridge Doctor?

Subject: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: GUEST,Andrew
Date: 30 Jun 01 - 08:57 PM

http://www.jldguitar.com/ is the website for the JLD bridge system, which is factory installed on every Breedlove. The claims sound good. Has anyone had experience with it,especially on high end guitars? Any opinions?

Best, Andrew

Subject: RE: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: Sorcha
Date: 30 Jun 01 - 09:30 PM

I don't play bridge.......(grin). Don't play guitar either. Fiddles got a built in bridge; so do guitars, come to think of it. Oh, you mean The Bridge from key to key? No? oh well.........('nother grin) Sorry, just couldn't resist.

Subject: RE: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: rangeroger
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 12:54 AM

I did a repair job on a friends Yamaha 12-string using the Bridge doctor system. I took it to Strawberry one time and let Michael Lewis, our festival luthier,work on it.He refretted it,reset and adjusted the neck, but there wasn't anything he could do about the face and action at the festival.Love those plywood 12 string tops.

He told me about the bridge doctor and gave me a Stewart MacDonald catalogue to order it.I took the guitar back to the friend and toldhim everything and that the recommendation was to buy a new guitar.That wasn't an option, so I ordered the system,extra brass bridge pins, and new strings.When everything arrived, I took it all to my friends bar and assembled it all on a pool table while he fed me gin and tonics and a few tokes.Good lighting on a pool table.It only took a short time to do it and tune the guitar.

Played absolutely great.

It's really amazing to watch the face straighten out as you tighten the thing up.I had to come back several nights in a row to keep re-tuning and testing that 12.

He's still playing it and when friends come over and play it and see the apparatus through the sound hole, he tells them what it is.

I have a Japanese Wilson 12-string that I plan to convert to a mandocello and it's going to get a Bridge Doctor when I do it.

rr

Subject: RE: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: Midchuck
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 08:32 AM

The word I get from the flatpick list is that it can make a great difference on el cheapo guitars, but not much difference on fine quality ones.

I don't know whether Breedlove lightens up their top bracing because the BD takes up the strain instead. I would think you'd have to, to get any real benefit from it on a fine guitar.

If I had an otherwise good guitar, that was not valuable enough to justify the cost of a professional rebuild, and had severe bellying and/or loose bridge problems, I might very well go that route.

Peter.

Subject: RE: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: GUEST,Erin
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 10:05 AM

What the heck is a mandocello? The JLD system looks very interesting. There must be some real benefit for Breedlove to build it into every new guitar.

Good day, Erin

Subject: RE: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 11:28 AM

Anyone think the tonal benefits would be worth installing it into a guitar that's fine already? It's not that expensive, and I'd be willing to give it a go, just to see...

Subject: RE: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: GUEST,Phillip
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 11:28 AM

The JLD/Bridge Doctor system allows new guitar builders to brace the top of the guitar much more lightly than "normal". This makes for a much more lively sounding guitar because the top reacts more quickly and responsively without the restrictive bracing. The JLD system transfers some of the string tension to the tailblock and body of the instrument, so it is not without it's tradeoffs either! Just one luthier's attempt at a new approach.

Subject: RE: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: Murray MacLeod
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 12:53 PM

Philip, your brief bracing analysis is totally misleading. The logical conclusion of your thinking is that a guitar top with no bracing would be liveliest of all. In fact all the experiments carried out so far negate that viewpoint completely.

Bracing, properly installed and shaped, is an integral part of a guitar top, contributing to, not detracting from the tone, and to view it as "restrictive" is to miss the point completely.

Murray

Subject: RE: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: GUEST,Phillip
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 04:42 PM

Murray

My first sentence agrees with your point! Guitar tops must be braced to withstand the forces of string tension. The eternal battle is to strike a compromise between "strong enough" and "restrictive". I stand by my statements! I've glued enough bracing to guitar tops and repaired and replaced enough cracked tops to understand the forces at work in a musical instrument!

Subject: RE: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: Lucius
Date: 01 Jul 01 - 04:57 PM

I installed one on my handmade guitar on the advice of the guy I bought it from. He tried one in a Gibson and thought that the sound "Opened up" with a bridge doctor. I think that he was right. My guitar sounds much more balanced across the entire range, with what sounds to me to be additional "chorus" in the acoustics.

I feel that I've lost a bit in volume, but the guitar was a boomer to begin with. It suits my fingerstyle playing much better.

I give the bridge doctor a thumbs up.

Lucius

Subject: RE: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: Whistle Stop
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 08:27 AM

Guest Erin, a mandocello is basically a bigger, lower-pitched mandolin. Back in the early 20th century, Gibson started manufacturing mandolin-family instruments that corresponded to the instruments in the violin family. There was the mandolin (tuned the same as a violin), the mandola (tuned like a viola), the mandocello (cello) and the mandobass (double bass). They had mandolin orchestras and ensembles, which they promoted in large and small communities across the USA. The trend kind of died eventually, but you can still find these instruments -- old ones, and modern versions -- and you sometimes hear them used in Celtic-influenced music these days. Tim O'Brien is one well-known musician who plays the mandocello quite often (his is built in the shape of a guitar, but if you look closely you can count eight strings arranged in four pairs).

Subject: RE: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 02 Jul 01 - 11:21 AM

Sounds interesting - only thing is, when I looked through that site Andrew gave us, the only shop doing it in Europe turned out to be in Finland, which is a bit out of the way for me.

Subject: RE: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: GUEST,Richard Bridge
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 09:08 AM

Eventually found this one too.

Subject: RE: Anyone use Bridge Doctor?
From: Clinton Hammond
Date: 20 Nov 02 - 09:23 AM

This is the one I was trying to find for ya... good hunting!

;-)