Banjo Bridges by Bart

Do I need a compensated banjo bridge?

The purpose of a compensated bridge is to correct intonation problems on banjos. Some banjos do, and some do not have these problems. If you've done the tweaking routines in the previous pages and your bridge is in the proper location and all notes sound fine when you play your chords: nope, you do not need a compensated bridge. If on the other hand, no matter what you did and some of the notes in a chord still sound sour: yes, you do need a compensated bridge - it's as simple as that. Suppose the intonation is sorta acceptable and you can live with it? No brainer, you can do without one. Let me stress again though, needing a compensated bridge does not reflect on the quality of your banjo because there are many factors in the way people set up their banjos, or the way they play them, that affect intonation.

Keep in mind: if you've determined that your banjo does not need compensation and you put a compensated jobbie anyway, you will be introducing compensation problems, possibly severe ones at that...

There are a lot of compensated bridges on the market these days, including the ones I make. Some are thick, thin, notched, moon shaped, radiused and of course, a huge selection as far as the types of wood they're made out of. When it comes to compensated bridges you'll see them in different shapes, some are crescent shaped, some S shaped, some are notched. Most of them lengthen the string(s) while some also shorten them with negative compensation. Curiously, the latter is often used when the second string sits on a compensated nut. Uh, you mean the second string is lengthened by the compensated nut but shortened at the bridge with negative compensation? Yeah, go figure that one eh... Hmmm, so many decidedly different approaches all promising to fix your intonation problems. I'm guessing you gotta be pretty confused and well, I'm not surprised because, really, you should be.

Consider that compensation is achieved by physically altering the string(s) length so if one manufacturer uses one set of measurements and another manufacturer uses way different measurements to correct your intonation problem(s) - does that mean there's more than one way to correct the same intonation problem? Of course not. Without measuring exact compensation values you're stuck with guesses and "about this much," well, I'm guessing you don't tune your strings that way either...

On the next page I explain how to measure the exact amount of compensation each one of your strings need and those unique measurements are what I use to build people's compensated bridges. Don't forget you still get to specify which woods and other specs you'd like me to use when building your ideal bridge so you'll have the whole thing custom tailored to your personal preference needs so you can have the best of both worlds: proper sound/tone AND proper intonation.

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