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Stringbean45 - Posted - 05/31/2013: 22:38:27
Hi all,
I had a customer wanting me to build him a Big Foot 6 String Bridge for his Banjotar, as the bridge on it was not doing a good job, and I was going to put some pictures up on another topic I had running "Have you ever seen a Bridge like this", but packed it up for shipping before I got the pictures of it.
The Customer, Junkyard Guitar, was gracious enough to write a report on the bridge, and put some pictures up on that topic, which I'll also share here too.
"
hi don , i got the bridges and i have to say that bigfoot was just what i was lookin for .. to be honest i don't know a lot about banjo's but i've been workin on guitars for 45 years so while some things are different some things are pretty much the same .. so settin up a banjo is not a problem for me .. my problem was the banjo as i got it had this puny little tailpiece that if it was at the beach would be called a 97 pound weakling .. and the guy who had this before me put a bridge on it that was radiused so that i could play the center strings but not the outer strings ..( low and high e and b and a ) so i ordered a better bridge .. the one that was on there had all the strings tryin to make left and right turns from the tail to make the slots they put in the bridge .. ( which were also set up wrong i might add . ) the slots should have been about a 2 and an 8th string spread and this was just under 2 .. may not sound like much but it is if you're used to a wider spread .. now i'm not sure how a regular banjo is radiused but on a guitar it can vary from maker to maker .. a gibson will be about a 12 and a modern fender will be about a 9.5 .. a vintage fender will be about a 7.25 .. and an ibanez can be anywhere from a 9.5 to about a 20 all accordin to what model and year .. not tryin to bore you with numbers here but the long and short of it is if you don't get your radius right you're gonna have problems .. a lower number means a much greater curve and a higher number means a much flatter fingerboard .. 20 is about as flat as they come and 7.25 about as curved .. so this genius i got this banjitar from put this bridge on here with about 9.5 radius and i'd say this fingerboard is at least a 16 .. end result = strings bottomin out .. so i got that other bridge with no string slots because i knew they'd probably make them wrong .. i also got a new tasilpiece that i had to jerryrig to fit but it now has a straight string pull from the tail to the bridge .. i can't see any good reason why you'd wanna make a banjo tail that made strings go left and right to reach the slots they have to go in .. so the new tail solved that problem .. but the bridge even tho it was taller than the old bridge came with these tiny tiny feet and the pressure of the strings on the bridge made it sag in the middle .. i'd have to say the new bridge was also a 97 pound weakling .. so here's where don comes in also known as stringbean .. i saw his bridges on ebay after makin myself stupid from lookin at bridge after bridger after bridge knowin they probably wouldn't work .. i knew what i wanted but it like tryin to nail jello to a tree to get any kinda dimensions as to what they were sellin .. most of em were just 5 string bridges made to sort of work on a 6 string .. so i sent don a few emails.. 3 to be exact because ebay don't allow but so many words and i didn't wanna be misunderstood . after talkin to him on the phone he understood what i needed and suggested his bigfoot bridge . he still thinks his spillway dam bridge might work too and i'm gonna hang onto to it cause it just might .. but for now i'm really happy with this bigfoot bridge .. don got the string spread right on both of em and this banjitar has never sounded better or played better ..as a fater of mact i'm willin to bet there ain't another dean backwoods banjitar that can play as well as this one i have here .. i'm gonna put up some pics so you can see what i mean ..
"now on the three pics i put up the first one shows the new tail and the old puny tail .. what a difference a piece of good tail can make huh ?? the second shows the bridge i ordered and you can see that it can actually slide under the bigfoot bridge and the strings still don't touch .. and there's no slots on it . the pressure the new tail put on that bridge seemed like it could actually push it thru the back of the head .. i doubt it really could but to look at it you'd think so ..and the last pic shows the difference in the size of the feet from the radiused bridge and th new one that was unslotted .. now had the old bridge not been radiused it might have worked .. why they had to put that curve on it i'm not sure .. coulda been one of them trips they took and forgot to pack their luggage ?? i dunno .. "
I'm going to put an ad in the Classified Section here on the hangout for the 6 String Big Foot Bridge in case there are others out there needing a better bridge for their Banjotar.
Thanks,
Don
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xnavyguy - Posted - 06/01/2013: 07:57:30
quote:
Originally posted by beegee
Is my royalty check in the mail?
Bob,
For some reason the postal service has been diverting those checks from Grifton to Austin. Some confusion in the routing numbers on the envelopes. Unfortunately, I cashed those checks before I realized the error. I have filed the appropriate papers with the postal service and they assured me that they will straighten it out sometime in this millineum. 
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