Hi mass Bass Bridge

[Mickyk]

?How much of a difference do Hi Mass Bass Bridge's make to a Fender MIM P bass.

[Burns-bass]

Very little. If people pretend they can tell the difference I wouldn’t believe them. The upgrade can be made in a few seconds and won’t cost you much. 
 

(Other opinions may exist)

[Mickyk]

1 minute ago, Burns-bass said:

Very little. If people pretend they can tell the difference I wouldn’t believe them. The upgrade can be made in a few seconds and won’t cost you much. 
 

(Other opinions may exist)

Cheers ,I'm always searching for that classic vintage tone, which Fender claim you'll get more off if you installed one of these. 

[Geek99]

Snake oil - tried it 

maybe there’s a difference at stadium volumes but real world ? No, imho

 

you may get some functional things like threaded barrels for string spacing or somesuch 

 

 

[Burns-bass]

17 minutes ago, Mickyk said:

Cheers ,I'm always searching for that classic vintage tone, which Fender claim you'll get more off if you installed one of these. 

Snap!

 

In all fairness, the best sounding jazz bass I’ve ever heard has one. It also has high output vintage pickups and is strung with chromes. 
 

I wanted something that would be ideal for jazz, blues and funk and this is, but I’m pretty sure the bridge has little to do with that!

[Thunderbird]

I like hi mass bridges as I find them sturdier but as far as I can tell they make no difference to the sound at all 

[Rexel Matador]

Wait, so Fender claim installing a hi mass bridge will give you more vintage tone even though their old basses didn't have hi mass bridges on them?

 

I put one on my MIM P and swapped back pretty much immediately. I can't guarantee it wasn't all in my head but it seemed to make it lose its edge somehow. So in my experience the effect on the tone is somewhere between nothing and slightly worse!

[Jonesy]

1 minute ago, Rexel Matador said:

Wait, so Fender claim installing a hi mass bridge will give you more vintage tone even though their old basses didn't have hi mass bridges on them?

 

You beat me to it, I don't get that logic at all 🤔

[Geek99]

There’s nothing much wrong with a BBOT bridge, other than bring subjectively ugly 

 

I seriously doubt it makes much, if indeed any difference and I bet a good setup is more important to tonal quality anyway 

[Boodang]

There is an arguement for low mass bridges! But to be honest the only difference I've found with either is that after market bridges like KSM etc are just better engineered than a standard one.

[charlie_groove]

Hi guys. Maybe I'm a little off-topic since I'm no Fender guy and of course, I'm not an expert in the matter, but what makes me think that there's a difference indeed between regurlar/vintage vs high mass bridges is that great luthiers (Tobias, Fodera, Furlanetto, Smith...) they all choose to install any type of high mass bridges on their axes, and I don't believe it to be just for aesthetic reasons. I guess high mass bridges transfer the vibration of the strings in a way that makes the body to resonate more than regular bridges. But I'm just guessing...  

[Boodang]

According to the blurb from (some) bridge manufacturers, the key element in transferring string vibrations, regardless of the mass involved, is the amount of contact the saddle has with the base of the bridge, thus, 2 grub screws are quite inefficient at doing this. Having a saddle that sits flush is apparently much better but the engineering solution so that this can happen whilst still being height adjustable has to be quite elegant. KSM and Babicz more or less manage this, but that's why they are expensive. 

[Geek99]

5 hours ago, charlie_groove said:

Hi guys. Maybe I'm a little off-topic since I'm no Fender guy and of course, I'm not an expert in the matter, but what makes me think that there's a difference indeed between regurlar/vintage vs high mass bridges is that great luthiers (Tobias, Fodera, Furlanetto, Smith...) they all choose to install any type of high mass bridges on their axes, and I don't believe it to be just for aesthetic reasons. I guess high mass bridges transfer the vibration of the strings in a way that makes the body to resonate more than regular bridges. But I'm just guessing...  

but also a BBOT bridge might look a bit cheap on a super premium instrument? 

[Bolo]

But but but any energy transferred from the string to the body is lost tone. The string moves through the magnetic field of the pickup right? Any energy that is transferred away from the string motion is not moving through the magnetic field.

 

Now then, higher mass requires more energy to move. Absorbing less energy from the string. Leaving more timbre for the magnetic field to read.

 

If by vintage you mean a dark, slightly muted, warm tone then yes, losing a bunch of energy (or information) will do that. But not through a high mass bridge.

[Bassfinger]

The pickups are sensitive to the vibration of the strings above them, not the instruments body, not the neck, or the birds flying south, or the earths core. Provided the saddles are equally hardened there is no means by which different bridges can affect the sound.

 

Indeed, the more energy a bridge "absorbs", mas people say, the less is available to make the strings vibrate above the pickups.

 

So, im going with no difference.  They can come with handy stringing and adjustment options, but I can't actually hear any difference and Ive yet to see an oscilloscope trace that shows any difference. 

[tegs07]

7 hours ago, Jonesy said:

 

You beat me to it, I don't get that logic at all 🤔

Possibly because the original instruments were string through body and high mass bridge development made this unnecessary? There must have been a perceived improvement for all the R&D to have gone into the development of high mass bridges. I’m not sure I can find a huge difference though other than they look nice and are generally less likely to have sharp edges.

Edited November 11, 2021 by tegs07

[Velarian]

The only benefit I gained by fitting a high mass bridge was that I had a spare bridge left over for my bitsa build 😂

 

I guess you could argue the physics all day long but subjectively it makes sod all difference IMHO. 

[Trueno]

I hate the look of BBOT bridges. I always replace them with a drop-in Gotoh bridge… they look great. I’ve never heard any difference in tone.

[Geek99]

Possibly string-thru makes a difference albeit a small one. Don’t think bridge mass matters at all

[Cato]

I've got a Fender Hi Mass bridge on a Deluxe P.

 

It's a nice unit, no sharp edges so great for palm muting and the saddles are locked into tracks on the base plate so you can't pull them sideways like you can on basic BBOT designs.

 

It's a solid bit of kit and I prefer it to the standard BBOT, but if it makes a jot of difference to the tone of the instrument I can't hear it.

[Steve Browning]

I have swapped the bbot bridges on most of my basses, for Gotoh versions. That was mainly because the Gotoh bridges have the grub screws sitting in tracks. I work on the (theoretical) principle that they are held more firmly.

 

On one occasion, I swapped a bbot for a Fender Hi Mass bridge and the acoustic volume and sustain of the bass were very markedly different. I cannot offer an explanation but can only report what my ears told me.

[Doctor J]

10 hours ago, Mickyk said:

Cheers ,I'm always searching for that classic vintage tone, which Fender claim you'll get more off if you installed one of these. 

Think about it for a while. Did the basses which created that classic vintage tone have high-mass bridges? Were they old/vintage basses when the classic vintage tone was being recorded?

[BigRedX]

It depends what "vintage tone" we're talking about. Perhaps they mean the sound of a 70s Fender fitted with an after-market Badass Bridge?

 

The "mass" of a high-mass bridge makes almost zero difference. Once it is attached to the body it effectively becomes part of it, and therefore the overall increase in mass of the body plus bridge between the BBOT and a high mass bridge is negligible.

 

However the improved engineering of a typical high-mass design will give several practical advantages to stability and ease of intonation adjustment.

 

And just to show that most high-mass bridge marketing departments know nothing about physics, the benefits to string vibration are nothing to do with energy transfer but are about minimising energy loss. The better engineering of these bridges mean that there is less chance of string vibration energy being used up making the intonation and height-adjustment screws rattle and vibrate, and therefore slightly more energy available to be detected by the pickup.

[TrypF]

I swapped out my BBOT bridge for a Babincz one on my MIM Precision (my profile pic) about ten years ago due to stability issues (strings were moving in the threaded saddles). To my ears the sustain has improved and it's rock solid - I like the way you can set it up just so, then lock it with an Allen key. I changed the pickup to a Seymour QP shortly after, transforming a decent Precision into an absolute rock beast. Not for every use, but everyone knows it's there when it's on a gig.

[Boodang]

2 hours ago, Bassfinger said:

The pickups are sensitive to the vibration of the strings above them, not the instruments body, not the neck, or the birds flying south, or the earths core. Provided the saddles are equally hardened there is no means by which different bridges can affect the sound.

 

Indeed, the more energy a bridge "absorbs", mas people say, the less is available to make the strings vibrate above the pickups.

 

So, im going with no difference.  They can come with handy stringing and adjustment options, but I can't actually hear any difference and Ive yet to see an oscilloscope trace that shows any difference. 

The only bridge I've seen that actually has made a difference on an oscilloscope... a Ray Ross saddle-less. It's a weird bridge... any body got one?