Has anyone tried the Jess Loureiro electrum bridge?

[Don B]

https://www.reddit.com/r/offset/comment ... ng_bridge/

[Larry Mal]

Yeah, it's been discussed here a fair amount. I think it's awful, some other people like it. I think there's much better alternatives out there including basically any old Mustang bridge, and it only goes up from there.

[timtam]

There were common reports on several forums that he had disappeared in the last 6 months, with orders unfulfilled. But his reverb shop shows recent sales feedback ..
https://reverb.com/au/shop/jess-loureir ... s/feedback
https://www.facebook.com/Jess-Loureiro- ... 274111843/
http://www.offsetguitars.com/forums/vie ... 8&t=110502

BTW if you can drill three holes you can assemble one for about $20 ...

Compensated saddles ...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/3-Pcs-Wilkinso ... 2434059658
https://www.ebay.com/itm/One-Set-of-3-S ... 3502630608 (Mastery-like swivels)
Bridge plate ...
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Threaded-Saddl ... 2951781769

And of course you can decide for yourself if you run the strings through the original bridge string holes like he does (somewhat buzzstop-like) ... or not. Although you'd probably need to groove the saddles if you don't.

[Larry Mal]

Right, there's nothing he's using here that's at all of better quality than cheap Chinese imported garbage and if you want that, just save yourself a lot of money and get an import Mustang bridge and call it a day. Plus, that Mustang bridge will be a much better design anyway.

If there is one thing I absolutely hate about this bridge besides the general lameness and low quality of the thing, it's that he drilled three holes in the back plate and now your strings are supposed to go through the other metal holes that held the saddles? You'll be using a vibrato unit and just rubbing metal on metal as you do- just a drilled out metal hole?

How is that not going to have you breaking strings all the time? How is that not going to lead to incredible tuning problems?

I have some Hipshot benders, and the pass through holes in the bridge like that, but you get these little plastic sheaths so that you don't have metal on metal as you do that. This guy doesn't even seem to include that, so God help anyone who actually tries to use this... garbage.

Or maybe your strings are supposed to ride over the top of it like they would a Jazzmaster or Mustang saddle? But those sit higher than these repurposed Telecaster saddles, so do your strings just lie on the back plate?

I guess I could be wrong about this... I don't know anyone who ever bought one. But it just looks like a terrible bridge in literally every way to me.

[BoringPostcards]

I have no idea about this bridge, but I can’t see why anyone would want spaces between their saddles, especially such large spaces. Seems like it was just slapped together in a moment of inspiration without too much though as to how it would function.

[B]

I have no idea about this bridge, but I can’t see why anyone would want spaces between their saddles, especially such large spaces. Seems like it was just slapped together in a moment of inspiration without too much though as to how it would function.

THIS.

I was about to post that opinion almost verbatim.

[601210]

Has he ever dispelled the notion that he just bought an aftermarket JM bridge and tele saddles and drilled 3 holes? Because that's really the only way any of this design makes sense.

I can't really think of a way that running the strings through the old adjustment screw holes isn't bad for your stringers, either. I've thought of doing that for adding a bigsby to a toploader tele but scraping your strings across that narrow an edge with that much pressure can't be good, right? I guess the idea here is it's supposed to bind to the strings?

[Larry Mal]

I have no idea about this bridge, but I can’t see why anyone would want spaces between their saddles, especially such large spaces. Seems like it was just slapped together in a moment of inspiration without too much though as to how it would function.

Actually, Bill Callaham, who makes excellent bridges, specifically makes sure his Telecaster saddles do not touch each other:

"I guess I should take it as a compliment that people are now copying our saddles. We have even supplied some of these people with parts. But they do not understand the details. The current Fender saddles and some of the other aftermarket saddles touch each other firmly. They even make a big deal about it. They are greatly mistaken and flawed in their thinking. Sympathetic vibrations from one string can now influence the vibrations of another string causing dissonant overtones to occur that will drive you crazy, especially at high volume. It is this type of vibration that occurs on acoustic guitars, with their single saddle, that causes beat tones when certain chords are played and phasing problems on other chords. We purposely try to avoid firm large contact between our saddles for this reason."

Of course, his bridges are well thought out works of art using only the highest quality available, and this Jess Loureiro bridge is just cheap Asian import junk crudely repurposed to serve a different need poorly.

Make of that what you will. I can say that Callaham bridges are excellent and sound wonderful- I own two and used to own a third.

[timtam]

But a 3-saddle tele bridge has 3 pairs of strings that are on the same saddle. So saying that each 2-string saddle should not contact the next would seem to be somewhat secondary would it not ?

Actually I think the jury is out on whether it's good or bad for saddles to touch. While Callaham says they shouldn't, G&L's premium saddle lock bridge has a screw designed to jam them all together ...
https://glguitars.com/saddle-lock-bridge/
"The most significant feature is a small Allen screw on the side of the bridge, which presses all the saddles together so they resonate as though they were one single mass. This eliminates the loss of string vibration energy caused by side-to-side saddle movement inherent in other designs."

But of course no one's presenting any actual vibration data to prove their assertions that contact is important, or the lack of it is important. So it's probably all just marketing hype. And probable that it doesn't actually matter much, since of course with all of them each saddle is still in contact with the bridge plate ... which is in contact with ... all the other saddles.

[Larry Mal]

Actually I think the jury is out on whether it's good or bad for saddles to touch. While Callaham says they shouldn't, G&L's premium saddle lock bridge has a screw designed to jam them all together ...
https://glguitars.com/saddle-lock-bridge/
"The most significant feature is a small Allen screw on the side of the bridge, which presses all the saddles together so they resonate as though they were one single mass. This eliminates the loss of string vibration energy caused by side-to-side saddle movement inherent in other designs."

Right, I'm not really endorsing either view, hell, I don't know. I'm just presenting the theory... I mean, if Bill Callaham's idea is that acoustic guitars sound bad because of the single saddle then I don't know what to say about that.

Violins have a single bridge, they sound pretty good...

I was just saying that the Jess Loureiro person could be said to have subscribed to the Bill Callaham theory, but that of course is not what we are seeing, we are just seeing a cheap import bridge plate with cheap import Telecaster style saddles shoved onto it.

I used to be polite when I would see individuals here make their own bridges in their garages like this, but this guy's production bridge is something I deeply dislike. Like I say, the Mustang bridge design is frankly great, as few moving parts as possible, fail-safe, well designed- it usually only suffers from the cheap construction when you see them out there.

But even a poorly made Mustang bridge is far superior to this hack work.

[Sonichris]

The saddles in picture Jess took are installed wrong. The E/A saddle on the far left should be in the middle, and the current middle should be the EA saddle. There is no way the guitar will intonate across those 4 strings the way it is.

[Larry Mal]

Ha! Didn't notice that.

[Fiddy]

This bridge ucks

[backporchmusic]

On a trem equipped guitar, I wouldn't want strings running through holes (in the metal) behind the saddles. Seems like a snag waiting to happen. If they were open channels, maybe.

[Larry Mal]

On a trem equipped guitar, I wouldn't want strings running through holes (in the metal) behind the saddles. Seems like a snag waiting to happen. If they were open channels, maybe.

Which I now double checked, the strings are in fact designed to run through the holes in the back of the bridge:



What an awful design. So the bridge is rocking, the strings are stretching, and at every bit of it we have metal scraping on metal.

I think we can all see how awful that is. What the hell was anyone thinking with this.