On 7 April I received this maple bridge from Jeff Weitzel,
designer and builder of Weitzel Banjos (http://weitzelbanjo.com)
who offered a bunch of perks -- including his own recipe for a five string
bridge -- in a kickstarter-like effort
to finance his experiments aimed at melding traditional banjo shapes and new
designs. His website is worth a
visit. He’s got some exciting
innovations, and his designs pair these inventive forms with a reverence for
traditional building choices, and tasteful, artistic wood selection.
I asked for a 5/8 inch bridge, and as a consequence I could
only put it on my A scale. I’ll go back
to Jeffrey later and buy myself a 6/8 incher so I can see how these bridges do
on my standard scale banjos.
Here’s my test drive video:
The banjo you see in this video is a Style S Vega pot –
probably off of a banjo mandolin from the late 1920s – grafted onto a Wyatt
Fawley neck.
The only change I had to make to the bridge was to deepen
the slots for the first and fifth strings; I tend to have a sledgehammer
approach to down picking, and once I made those changes the first and fifth
strings stayed in place, standing up to my hard playing attack.
There’s a good bit of mass to this bridge, and it produces
precisely the kind of thump I like. I
can’t say the bridge made the banjo sound brighter, nor can I say it softened
the sound. I can say that the bridge
sharpened the sound each string gives off, and maybe made for a little bit more
volume, and crack, always good with a little banjo like this one. It did give each string a good amount of
tension so that they each stand up to hard playing. I like the feeling of bridge stability that
I’m getting on the Remo Weather King head.
I would guess that the mass and dimension of the bridge at each foot
would provide good stability on a skin head.
I like playing “musical bridges” with my banjos, and I’ll
try all sorts of newfangled bridge innovations just on the possibility that
something new might change things up in either the direction I like for my
sound, or in a potentially exciting new and unanticipated trajectory. This bridge gives me a little bit of each – a
solidification of the formula I look for in a bridge, plus some unexpected dividends.
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After playing it for a while, the Weitzel bridge
does add some depth to the fourth string, as far as I can tell, and it also lets
that string stand out and stand in good balance with the rest of the
strings.
I
should say that sometimes, to my ear, an A scale banjo can sound like a toy instrument. Cranking it up a few frets can to my ear
sound a bit tin-like but this banjo gives my A scale a serious sound, and gives
me what I would describe as sharply defined notes.
I’m going to keep this one on the A scale banjo and as a
consequence I’m going to look forward to playing this little one more.
Standard Banjo Disclaimer:
I have no entangling alliances with Weitzel Banjos. I enjoyed Jeffrey’s website explanations of
his experiments, and got myself a bridge and a cap emblazoned with his logo as
the perks that came with throwing some pocket change at his crowd financing
effort.
Play hard,
Lew
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