Jess Loureiro Bridge

Talk about modding or building your own guitar from scratch.
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oid
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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by oid » Thu Apr 12, 2018 1:08 pm

Supa-Stang wrote:
Thu Apr 12, 2018 11:21 am
I don't think anyone could machine the whole bridge or get it machined with quality materials and sell it for £45.
There is very little machine work needed to make such a bridge, the body is just u-channel, materials would cost very little, most of the work is the posts and the prep for chrome. I could probably manage to crack one out without power tools in under an hour if I could find u-channel of proper dimension off the shelf, abit over an hour if I have to cut down some u-channel or slice some rectangular tubing in half, If I used the proper modern tools for this job and made a few jigs, I could make quite a pile of bridges in a days work. If I could justify that days work selling them at that price, it would depend on if I was in it for the long haul and was ok with the idea of repeating that days work over and over, which I am not, but it would not be bad for a little extra cash on the side.

If he is just going through the old string holes of a stock bridge there would be string breakage/catching string issues, but properly contoured it would likely be good enough. I have no idea if his are, the pictures do not tell and my mention of that in the other post went unanswered, not sure if that is just due to language barrier issues or just avoidance.

I would like to hear a first hand experience of this bridge, mostly for curiosities sake, I see no reason to give up my stock AVRI bridge/trem.
Logic gates based on billiard-ball computer designs have also been made to operate using live soldier crabs of the species Mictyris guinotae in place of the billiard balls.

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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by epizootics » Thu Apr 12, 2018 11:25 pm

I hear what you say, but believe me, you'd have a hard time getting a consistent result doing it this way, good enough for personal use but not for a commercial product. And this comes from a guy who loves messing about with bits of metal :) Mild steel and aluminium are easy to shape, for sure, but they hardly represent an improvement on your bog standard zinc alloy Chinese bridge. If I were to make or buy a 'better' bridge (ie. more durable and/or different tonally speaking), I'd want it to be stainless steel. You can work SS by hand and with simple tools, but it takes more time, just because it's so hard and takes a few tricks to do it right. And we're just talking about the U-channel here - which by the way is harder to source in the right dimensions and alloys. You still need a way to attach the right posts underneath, and unless you find just the right short rods with internal threading, you're in for a lot of pain drilling & tapping your way through 12mm of metal, keeping things dead straight & centered. The other thing is, your tools are going to wear down much faster. Files, taps, drill bits, sanding paper, etc. are a budget in themselves when you do this sort of stuff full time.

Once again, I'm not saying this can't be done. The masochist it me even enjoys doing this sort of stuff. I find elation in getting the speed & feed just right or filing a perfect radius, but having made a few bridges (and saddles, I think I posted something here about it yesterday), I got to the conclusion that unless I needed something very specific and exotic, paying £60 for a Staytrem bridge was a lot cheaper in terms of my own time and labour than making a bridge from scratch. If I boil things down to an hourly rate, it's just not worth it.

Obviously, both the Mastery & Staytrem offers are CNC machined and it doesn't take nearly as long as handcrafting it, but if you take the production costs into account (and those come with their own saddles), they are not that pricey when think of it. All those Chinese eBay/Aliexpress bridges are cast, using inferior metal alloys. Still harder than your mild steel/aluminium from the hardware store, but more likely to fail in the long run than SS (even though mechanical failure is hardly ever the issue with those parts, something that will last a life time sounds better in the long run on our cherished and over-abused axes). The Fender stock bridges are also cast, and may or may not use better materials.

To complicate things further, I find that the density of the materials used in the bridge are one of the key factors in the sound of a guitar. (I'm getting into a slippery territory here and speak strictly for myself here, all things tonal being a highly personal thing :-[ ). There are instances when a lighter bridge is more desirable. I made a stupidly lightweight aluminium bridge for one of my builds to get a shallow but springy, clicky tone. It works great but I know it'll wear down really quickly. So in a way, those cheapo internet bridges have their place in terms of guitar-making - they do do things a heavy stainless steel bridge can't do, but it is quite incidental.

Sorry for going off-topic here, I realize I spend much more of my waking time thinking about these things than I'd like care to :wacko:

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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by oid » Fri Apr 13, 2018 12:15 am

epizootics wrote:
Thu Apr 12, 2018 11:25 pm
I hear what you say, but believe me, you'd have a hard time getting a consistent result doing it this way
I suppose you are right and I was just speaking completely from ignorance and not personal experience and hard earned knowledge...
Logic gates based on billiard-ball computer designs have also been made to operate using live soldier crabs of the species Mictyris guinotae in place of the billiard balls.

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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by epizootics » Fri Apr 13, 2018 12:37 am

Sorry oid, I didn't mean it this way ;) Didn't mean to come across as mr-knows-it-all-been-there-done-this. Share your insights by all means, I could talk guitar bridges all day.

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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by oid » Fri Apr 13, 2018 2:33 am

Let us just be glad I responded before I did my taxes.

If I were to feel a need to go to a steel "better" than mild steel, I would use unhardened W1, while slower working than mild, it is a joy to work, stainless is to brittle for my tastes, it is not bad to work with most tools, but sucks to drill and tap. Stainless and common cast are probably the last two steels I would choose for a bridge in the end, but I would choose bronze over any steel. Once the techniques are learned, especially layout, any of these metals can be worked with hand tools to tolerances only machinist and the like have the skills and tools to measure the error. Your work can only be as good as your layout.

I once chatted with an old machinist from the UK, his test to move beyond apprentice was to take a 2 inch thick plate of steel and cut out a square of 6 inches by 6 inches from it, all faces had to be perfect 90 degrees and mirror polished. He then had to cut a square hole dead on center, 2 inches by 2 inches, perfectly square and parallel with all edges, surfaces mirror polish. After that he had to cut a cube 2x2x2 which would fit perfectly in that hole, same requirements, it had to slide smoothly through the hole and when held up to a bright light there could be no light showing around the edges of cube and be perfectly flush with the faces, it had to pass this test regardless of which way the cube was inserted. The cube was then used to test the rest of the measurements, since the main piece could be sectioned off into eight 2x2x2 cubes. He had to do this completely with manual hand tools, took him 3 tries to get it right. Do not underestimate the accuracy which can be achieved with hand tools alone.
Logic gates based on billiard-ball computer designs have also been made to operate using live soldier crabs of the species Mictyris guinotae in place of the billiard balls.

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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by arkivel » Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:47 am

It's pretty hilarious how you've cobbled together a few cheap parts to replicate an existing mod and then attached your name to it.

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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by 601210 » Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:52 am

Isn't Jess Loureiro a member here?

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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by mizbiz » Fri Apr 13, 2018 1:32 pm

601210 wrote:
Fri Apr 13, 2018 11:52 am
Isn't Jess Loureiro a member here?
Yeah, he joined to basically market his knockoff bridge to the community that invented it. :fp:

I've seen his posts on reddit and other guitar boards as well.

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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by Fiddy » Fri Apr 13, 2018 3:10 pm

Im going to start making knockoffs and selling them on ebay.

Ill call mine the ⚡Jess Lorenzo⚡Offest bridges.

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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by mizbiz » Fri Apr 13, 2018 4:06 pm

tribi9 wrote:
Fri Apr 13, 2018 3:10 pm
Im going to start making knockoffs and selling them on ebay.

Ill call mine the ⚡Jess Lorenzo⚡Offest bridges.
:w00t: my god, that would be amazing! Trademark it!

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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by timtam » Fri Apr 13, 2018 4:35 pm

The bridge itself is interesting. How well it works is as yet unknown. But it's the marketing / sales angle that seems to worry people. Perhaps if he had said this people would have been happier ? .... 'Here's an idea for a bridge that you can make yourself from readily available parts. Or if you don't want to make it you can buy it from the Jess Loureiro website.'
"I just knew I wanted to make a sound that was the complete opposite of a Les Paul, and that’s pretty much a Jaguar." Rowland S. Howard.

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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by Embenny » Fri Apr 13, 2018 4:57 pm

timtam wrote:
Fri Apr 13, 2018 4:35 pm
The bridge itself is interesting. How well it works is as yet unknown. But it's the marketing / sales angle that seems to worry people. Perhaps if he had said this people would have been happier ? .... 'Here's an idea for a bridge that you can make yourself from readily available parts. Or if you don't want to make it you can buy it from the Jess Loureiro website.'
You'd have to be a pretty inept businessman to say, "I'd like to sell you this thing you can make yourself in 15 minutes at a 70% savings."

I mean, Booster Juice just blends together easily-obtainable ingredients in a Vitamix for an absurd price, but they're smart enough to not openly post the recipes.
The artist formerly known as mbene085.

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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by timtam » Fri Apr 13, 2018 5:12 pm

mbene085 wrote:
Fri Apr 13, 2018 4:57 pm
You'd have to be a pretty inept businessman to say, "I'd like to sell you this thing you can make yourself in 15 minutes at a 70% savings."
You'd have to be a VERY inept businessman to say it quite that bluntly. ;)

The fact that this bridge is totally unproven at this point in time certainly doesn't help either. There are other alternative commercial offset bridges with elements that one can implement oneself cheaply instead of buying the ready-made item. But those commercial bridges are known to 'work' (to varying extents). And at the time they were first marketed, the 'fixes' to the stock bridge were probably not as widely known. So the timing of those bridges was more 'fortuitous'. And perhaps less obviously borrowing from other ideas / parts.

Anyway maybe someone can cobble one together off ebay and tell us if it works. ;)
Last edited by timtam on Fri Apr 13, 2018 5:17 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by mizbiz » Fri Apr 13, 2018 5:17 pm

There are actually several things that irk me about this dude…

1) He is touting this as his design. “So I decide to enter the market with a new design.” It isn’t. Could he have independently come up with this idea? Sure, but a quick search of the internet would yield similar results and would render that assumption invalid.

2) Zero research and development went into this supposed new design. “I thought about it and came to a very simple solution, a one that even Leo Fender could have used in his original design, using parts that he had designed. How did I solve the E string dance? just increasing the angle of the strings before touching the saddles, by using 6 holes guides through the bridge.” He essentially drilled 3 fucking holes. He didn’t come up with the 6 holes as string guides to increase the break angle (not the god damn tension, as he touts earlier in his description). He used the old screw holes… which by the way, is pretty much universally accepted and as a horrible idea. Also, no... Leo Fender wouldn't fucking use this design or endorse it!

3) He marks up the knock off bridges that he claims he invented nearly 400%. That I think pisses me off the most. I don’t care if he would have worded it differently on his website. I think that’s pretty fucked up, so in my humble opinion, fuck that knock off Electrum "offset" bridge and fuck that guy!

and yes... it riles me up thinking about it. :-[ *deep breaths... *deep breaths...

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Re: Jess Loureiro Bridge

Post by mizbiz » Fri Apr 13, 2018 5:22 pm

timtam wrote:
Fri Apr 13, 2018 5:12 pm
Anyway maybe someone can cobble one together off ebay and tell us if it works. ;)
Yup, it works. The original threads verify that. Is it better than literally any other existing bridge? That's subjective. But in my humble opinion, no.

...But it is fun to experiment with. If you have the time and parts, I would absolutely suggest it as a mod to try out yourself!

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