Babicz bridges....true or false ???

[TrevorR]

Yup, French style... More like "TAWM-bruh" but with a slightly guttural sound at the back of the throat on the "r"

http://dictionary.cambridge.org/pronunciation/english/timbre

I'd go for the UK pronunciation for preference myself...

Edited October 17, 2015 by TrevorR

[Kevin Dean]

A while ago I bought from here a jazz bass with a Status Neck & Wilkes hard where , The Bridge I replaced with one of these & I could hear a definite difference in tone , But the Old Bridge also wasn't earthed properly . My 36" " Shuker has a Schaller 2000 bridge It sounds great but I flipin HATE !! !! adjusting it & just for this reason I Might replace it with one of these .

[GremlinAndy]

Put the babicz on one of my jazz basses. It feels nice, it's well built, doesn't take the skin off your hand like the grub screws do, but I can't detect ant difference in tone or sustain. Maybe my old ears are just too tired to tell the difference though. It's a distinct possibility.

[Chienmortbb]

[quote name='TrevorR' timestamp='1444509065' post='2883805']
I've read this comment a lot on forums and it really doesn't make sense to me from a physics and engineering point of view. A bass is a much more complex system than just a wire oscillating between two fixed points being picked up by a magnet and wire coil. The vibrations within the body are so much a part of the finer timbre of the bass. When the string vibrates those vibrations are also transmitted into the body at the bridge and nut. Those will then resonate through the body and influence the movement of all the strings by transmitting vibrations back into them through the nut and bridge.

That won't change the fundamental sound of the string (basically down to the string and pickups/electronics) but it will certainly have a marked effect on the complex vibration patterns in the string. This will, therefore affect the timbre of the string. Now, the body vibrations will be affected by a whole range of factors - shape of body and neck, materials of the body and neck, the material and construction of the bridge and nut, the neck/body join etc etc etc... Hence the differences between different woods in a similar/identical bass design or switching from set to bolt-on to thru neck design. Some resonances will have a dampening effect others an additive effect so these things may affect other physical characteristics such as sustain etc.

Now that may sound far fetched and trying to blind with science gobbledygook but don't under estimate the effects that these sympathetic vibrations and resonances can have on the complex vibrations of the string.

Here's a subtle example. The housing of the clock mechanism isn't moving but one of the weights picks up the vibrations from the mechanism and the pendulum and starts to move in sympathy with it...

[media]http://youtu.be/_aILyKUm4IE[/media]

Here's a rather more well known and dramatic example of sympathetic resonance gone bad... Ironically, it's in a bridge...

[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3mclp9QmCGs[/media]

So, will it change the fundamental of any note? Probably not but differences can and will affect the sound/timbre in noticable ways.
[/quote]This is degenerating into a Tonewood debate. You are right that the materials have some affect on how the instrument sound but it is small on solid body bass.

Edited April 4, 2016 by Chienmortbb

[neilp]

<p style="margin-left: 80px;">It is a small effect, but the whole instrument vibrates, s it all contributes to tone, sustain etc. If you think about it, its clear that the bridge transfers vibrational energy into the body, which vibrates. The strings are vibrating too , so the pickups are vibrating relative to the strings, which is bound to have an effect on the frequencies detected by the pickups. I like the Babicz bridge, whether or not you can hear the difference.</p>

[TrevorR]

[quote name='Chienmortbb' timestamp='1459774801' post='3019428']
This is degenerating into a Tonewood debate. You are right that the materials have some affect on how the instrument sound but it is small on solid body bass.
[/quote]

Nope, it is a complex, real world system vs simple idealised system debate, in response to an oft quoted statement that nothing but the strings and the pickup have any effect at all on the tone of a bass. The differences are as likely to be how well the neck is seated, the nature of the joint, the construction of the neck and the body, the hardware used and a gazillion other things which have a lesser or greater effect. I wouldn't want to assert that any of those factors are small/minimal/negligible. Plus they all add up (or indeed subtract).

Again, it's as much the nature of the "how can two supposedly identical basses hanging on a wall next to each other sound and feel so different?" debate? All the same factors apply. Otherwise, for example, different necks can't have dead spots or loud spots where the body/neck resonances cancel each other out or combine to cause a prominent note... But we spend hours discussing these topics too... And why does one note on a solid bodied guitar/bass have a predisposition to feed back (controlled or otherwise, presuming it's not just a faulty pickup) when others don't? All down to the effects of internal resonances... Don't under estimate them...