Electric Guitar Bridges

The bridge is the piece on an electric guitar that connects the strings to the body. It's function is to support the strings, and to transfer the vibration of the strings to the body, to provide resonance and sustain.

The placement of the bridge on the body is crucial. The distance between the bridge and the nut is known as the "scale length", and it's between these two points that the string vibrates. The frets on the neck are placed at intervals that relate to the scale length, so if the bridge is placed improperly or matched to a neck built to a different scale length then the all of the fretted notes on the guitar will be out of tune with the open strings.

The parts on the bridge of an electric guitar that make direct contact with the string are known as saddles.  These can be moved backwards and forwards, to alter the intonation, and up and down, to alter the action.  These things will be done when a guitar is being set up, either for a new string gauge or tuning or just for periodic maintenance.

The bridge has contact with the string, and so the material it is made of will make a big difference to tone.  Most bridges are made of some type of metal.. softer "pot" metals will have a squishy, dull sort of tone, while hardened steel will have a clear bite and a long sustain.  Brass is warmer sounding and has a big sustain too.  Some bridges have graphite saddles, which have a very smooth and resonant sound.

Electric guitar bridges come in two basic varieties: fixed bridges, and tremolo bridges.

A fixed bridge is one that simply holds the pitch constant, and provides no active control over string tension.

A tremolo bridge is one with a bar attached that can be pressed, lifted, or shaken to alter the tension on the strings, and thus the pitch of the note(s) being sounded.  Strictly speaking, the word tremolo actually refers to variations in volume rather than pitch, and the correct word for the effect caused by using the bar should be called vibrato.  However, decades ago fender decided to call the bridge on their stratocaster a tremolo bridge and since then the name has stuck.  In common parlance, guitarists will usually just say "trem" instead of tremolo bridge.

Some of the more common fixed bridges include the stratocaster "hardtail" bridge, the telecaster bridge, and the tune-o-matic.

Hardtail bridges were introduced to Fender Stratocasters almost right from the beginning, for players who did not care to use the whammy bar.  It looks and operates almost exactly the same as a regular stratocaster bridge, but does not require any routing for springs, and obviously has no place for a tremolo arm to be inserted.

The telecaster bridge is a particularly distinctive looking square plate that covers a relatively large amount of the guitar body.  It's large enough to need to include a route for the bridge position pickup.  The original versions of the telecaster bridge only contained 3 saddles, each accomodating 2 strings each.  The more modern 6 saddle version allows for more precise adjustments to the guitar intonation.

Tune-O-Matic bridges were introduced to Gibson electric guitars very early on and are now found on a great many guitars.  They involve a flat-topped bar raised above the guitar body, with fairly small saddles on top.  They are held on to the body with the string tension, causing frustration to guitar newbies who take the strings off to to put on a new pair only to find that the bridge has fallen off and rolled under the couch.

A tremolo bridge can be locking or non-locking. The locking tremolos will lock the string in at the bridge and the nut to stop it from slipping during large pull-ups or dives. This allows for much more adventurous use of the bridge without effecting tuning stability. Non-locking tremolos use a regular nut and don't have any locking on the bridge, which makes it easier to change tunings quickly.

Non-locking tremolos

The stratocaster tremolo bridge, also known as a pivot bridge or a synchronised tremolo involves a combined bridge and tailpiece, balanced on a pivot point with springs in the back of the body to counter the tension from the strings.

The jazzmaster style tremolo works in a similar fashion, but seperates the bridge from the tailpiece, with the much greater length of string between the bridge and tailpiece creating strange sounding resonances on certain notes.

Before Fender introduced these bridges, the most commercially succesful tremolo bridge was the Bigsby Vibrato Tailpiece, which contains a spring loaded tailpiece behind the bridge.  They still have a following with retro guitarists, but have fallen out of favour among the mainstream guitar community because they are bulky, awkward and have poor tuning stability.

Locking Tremolos

The most common locking tremolo is the Floyd Rose.  The Floyd Rose is somewhat similar to the Fender Synchronise Tremolo, but locks the strings at the nut and the bridge, which stops the string from slipping even during large bends and dives.  When the nut is locked, the headstock tuners no longer work, so the Floyd Rose also contains fine tuners on the bridge.

A Kahler tremolo, like a Floyd Rose, locks the string at the bridge and at the nut. Unlike a Floyd Rose though, it doesn't use springs, or require a large cavity in the body. Instead of springs, a Kahler tremolo uses a cam-based mechanism to counterbalance the string tension.