Differences in Bridges of Various Violins

Video Transcript

"Hi! I’m David Kaynor for expertvillage.com. Now I can also show an old bridge which wasn’t fitted to this particular top, but by comparison it’s much smaller: a great deal of wood has been removed. This was individualize to some instrument not to this one but it would fit approximately like that. Now this bridge has a little piece of ebony in laid into it; the ebony supposedly will resist the wear from the strings better than maple will, so some bridges have a little ebony insert that supposedly give them longer life. This other bridge does not have an ebony insert, and it’s arguable that it’s a little more vulnerable to the wear of the E string, which is after all just a very thin piece of wire under very high tension. Now I can demonstrate, I can show a violin with the bridge installed on the instrument and here we can see, if the close up works well enough, we can see that there’s a very small piece of plastic tubing on the E string and this is acting like a bridge protector. It’s actually a little line of protection between the wire of the string under high tension and the maple. It’s also arguable that this filter is the vibrations of the E string a little bit, so that perhaps the sound that comes out of the fiddle has a somewhat rounder, softer richer sound rather than a shrilled, ziggy ringy sound which is associated with some E strings. And this is an example of a bridge that’s been individually fitted to this instrument and therefore is gaining the best possible transmission of vibrations at a comfortable string height for the player, usually me with an arch that sets the strings at a comfortable orientation for me, and because of the fit of the feet, it doesn’t wear the top anymore than it’s already worn by a various bridge, the various owners in the past."