theodoropoulos - 2-6-2015 at 06:33 AM
This is the most crucial point in my opinion ,the material,the shape,the weight and of course the design of the bridge...
So i made a bridge out of padauk and i wonder if anybody has used such a bridge...For me this wood is accoustically excellent..Compared to Indian
rosewood bridge it has more bass character!!
I have heard about pear..Generally any advice for bridge material??
Dont tell me about ebony..it is dead wood!
SamirCanada - 2-6-2015 at 07:04 AM
Paduk could work well. its pretty hard wood.
I think ebony bridges work also, I have a oud with ebony bridge and it sounds great.
I think (purely my opinion not scientifically guided) that the harder the bridge the less vibrations it will absorb away from the strings and transfer
it more directly to the soundboard. I mean, no one would make a bridge from softwood like cedar or spruce because it seems it would be absorbing the
vibrations instead of transferring them to the soundboard.
theodoropoulos - 2-6-2015 at 07:15 AM
i totally agree with you..its just mechanical my issue....
Working with padauk was very .....unpredictable with grains!!
but it has very sonic value in my opinion..
i will use it finally i think
thanks for quick response!
jdowning - 2-6-2015 at 03:07 PM
I think that it is the mass ('weight') of a bridge (a question of momentum) that is of primary significance rather than any acoustic or sonic values
of the wood. After all ebony and rosewood are woods preferred for the bridges of classical acoustic guitars so why not ouds?
Ibn al-Tahhan writing in the 14th C (Farmer translation) says " As for the bridge, it should not be weighted by anything, and should not be made of
ivory, ebony, gold, or any precious thing, because it makes the sound of the oud dull". In other words a heavy bridge is bad - but in those days
strings were of gut or silk not the greater relatively high tension and more massive wound modern plastic strings that are the modern way.
The modern strings will set a heavy bridge in motion whereas gut or silk strings will have greater difficulty.
Softwoods are not used for bridges because they cannot resist the mechanical crushing forces of the string and string tension or the shear stresses
that might cause a bridge to fail under string tension. Lighter hard woods such as pear wood are more suitable (light and hard) so were often used by
lute makers of the 16th/17th C (usually stained black).
All About Fixed Bridges
Alfaraby - 2-6-2015 at 04:04 PM
Maybe a reminder of this thread maybe of some help:
http://www.mikeouds.com/messageboard/viewthread.php?tid=14610#pid99...
Yours indeed
Alfaraby
theodoropoulos - 2-7-2015 at 03:08 AM
Μy point about ebony is that:
in classical guitars we need all the energy to be trasfered directly to the soundboard,without any loss .Such loss is caused by absorving energy
through the neck/fingerboard....Thats why they use ebony...due to high dampening effect...You can tap an ebony fretboard and a rosewood one....the
first is like a can of garbage the other is like bell..diiiiiiiiinggggggg...
So we dont want this in a bridge....Especially if we add big mass in an ebony bridge...
wish me luck with padauk....This wood is diiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinnggggggggggggggggggggggg 
theodoropoulos - 2-7-2015 at 04:37 AM
video
this is a small video of construction