Graphtech Resomax Bridge

[nicaguitar]

Hello my fellow jazzguitar nerds!!!

I just wanted to make a post talking about how blown I away I am from the graphtech resomax bridge. Before I go into detail, first let me give some background as to why I changed the bridge in the first place.

I have an old 70s ibanez hollowbody (very similar to a gibson es 330). It used to have a cheap nickel tunomatic bridge, which I eventually changed for a Titanium gotoh tunomatic. Now, the gotoh sounded great but it had this metallic frequency I couldnt stand. It was great if you wanted more bight playing rock and roll or something like that (the sustain and overall harmonic content was great) but that high frequency was too much, so much so that I changed to flatwounds and rolled the tone off just to compensate for the brightness.

I began doing some reasearch and eventually stumbled across the graphtech resomax bridge, at first I was skeptcal because they make big claims, but my oh my, it is trully an outstanding bridge. I would say it sounds in between a wooden bridge and a metallic tunomatic. The sustain and acoustic sound of the guitar improved alot, and the high frequency is gone!! It sound warm and just where I want it to be. If you have an archtop with a metallic tunomatic and want to have a better acoustic sound of your instrument, but dont want to go to a wooden bridge I HIGHLY recommend this bridge, Its truly fantastic!!

Cheers,

Edgard

P.S ( I am not endorsed in any way to graphtech , It just made such a big change That I thought it was worth sharing. If you have any questions about it let me know! )

[Eck]

This is just the info I needed. I’m building a small hollowbody and had been pondering the bridge extensively!


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[st.bede]

I have used graphtech saddles on a number of my guitars. They sound great. They are not as strong as metal, and I have had one saddle break. I went to replace it. That was easy but the replacement also broke. I figure there was a rough spot in the bridge or screw. I decided to trade the bridge out for a roller bridge (due to seeing how well it works with the Bigsby). I never problem solved the saddle breakage issue.

I do believe I can hear a difference with graphtech compared to metal. There is a little more presence, that does not take much away from a warm midrange. I would certainly try a graphtech bridge.

Would you say that the bridge allows for a more balanced articulate sound as compared to a ebony bridge? Or is it just much more warm and loses the presence that allows for articulate note separation? Also is the sustain such that it adds to possibly more feedback? Also how has the low end changed? Thank you

[Eck]

I just saw the types, thinking to go archtop, but wonder how much better it is than an ordinary archtop bridge. I actually don’t know what materials are used - i presumed wood but that’s such a wide range


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[Gabor]

I wonder the marketing fellow who invented the resomax term had ever a guitar, where he spend hours/days to investigate where the resonance is coming from...

[nicaguitar]

I have used graphtech saddles on a number of my guitars. They sound great. They are not as strong as metal, and I have had one saddle break. I went to replace it. That was easy but the replacement also broke. I figure there was a rough spot in the bridge or screw. I decided to trade the bridge out for a roller bridge (due to seeing how well it works with the Bigsby). I never problem solved the saddle breakage issue.

I do believe I can hear a difference with graphtech compared to metal. There is a little more presence, that does not take much away from a warm midrange. I would certainly try a graphtech bridge.

Would you say that the bridge allows for a more balanced articulate sound as compared to a ebony bridge? Or is it just much more warm and loses the presence that allows for articulate note separation? Also is the sustain such that it adds to possibly more feedback? Also how has the low end changed? Thank you

Its very hard to say if the sustain adds more feedback, I dont think so. When it comes to comparing with an ebony bridge, I would say that the wooden bridge is probably a little warmer but I havent tried an ebony bridge on my guitar so Its hard to say. When it comes to the low end I didnt listen to much of a difference compared do the titanium one.

[nicaguitar]

I just saw the types, thinking to go archtop, but wonder how much better it is than an ordinary archtop bridge. I actually don’t know what materials are used - i presumed wood but that’s such a wide range


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I wouldnt say its better than a wooden bridge, just different. just more convenient because its a tunomatic so its easier to intonate, and I do think it has better sustain. When it comes to comparing it to a traditional zinc or titanium saddle I definetly prefer the graphtec because it is much warmer and it does not have that annoying high frequency.

[Eck]

I wouldnt say its better than a wooden bridge, just different. just more convenient because its a tunomatic so its easier to intonate, and I do think it has better sustain. When it comes to comparing it to a traditional zinc or titanium saddle I definetly prefer the graphtec because it is much warmer and it does not have that annoying high frequency.

I actually thought about the resomax archtop bridge which looks like a compound material. If I go roller tune-o I could first try the other be I have from Stewmac. But this little guitar will probably have only a neck silent p90 so really asking for a (real or fake) wooden bridge.


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[diode]

I added the archtop version to an ES-175 because I was struggling with intonation. Like all one-piece bridges, the intonation isn’t perfect, but it is pretty close and a significant improvement over both the stock rosewood bridge and a rosewood replacement from StewMac.

It’s pre-filed and the string spacing fits over the humbucker poles perfectly. They’re inexpensive, too.

[pingu]

I have a rosewood bridge at the moment
on my archtop

I’m after a bit more shiny / sweet /
the top end of the sound
but i want to keep the warmth of the
rosewood

would a resomax bridge do this ?

thanks

ps
1. is resomax a plastic ?
2. can I sand the resomax base
to conform the shape
to my guitars arch top shape ?

[Eck]

I have a rosewood bridge at the moment
on my archtop

I’m after a bit more shiny / sweet /
the top end of the sound
but i want to keep the warmth of the
rosewood

would a resomax bridge do this ?

thanks

ps
1. is resomax a plastic ?
2. can I sand the resomax base
to conform the shape
to my guitars arch top shape ?

Somehow I was instinctively suspicious of rosewood for a bridge, it seems to soft. From their website it seems to me the resomax is some sort of plastic and they advertise the base is flexible to fit many tops. There’s also a standard and a low set version.


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[Marty Grass]

I have a couple of guitars with Resomax bridges. They seem very good.

Another option between steel and wood is nylon. Why do some Gibsons have nylon bridge saddles?

[RJVB]

This being made by Graphtech I presume that the material is similar to their what their tusq saddles and nuts are made of. That material is pretty soft; it gets marked by the thinner strings very easily.
Tusq is intended to emulate (and improve over) bone; if the resomax material is supposed to emulate wood it might be even softer.

I've seen 1 YT video raving about the things; watching that one was enough ... but if someone has or knows of a serious acoustic comparison (on a true hollow body) I'd be interested.

[nicaguitar]

I have a rosewood bridge at the moment
on my archtop

I’m after a bit more shiny / sweet /
the top end of the sound
but i want to keep the warmth of the
rosewood

would a resomax bridge do this ?

thanks

ps
1. is resomax a plastic ?
2. can I sand the resomax base
to conform the shape
to my guitars arch top shape ?

I dont have the answeres to these questions because my version is the tunomatic one, but if you write an e-mail to graphtech they normally respond pretty fast! heres the e-mail. support@graphtech.com

[sgosnell]

Rosewood is not soft, it has long been a standard for fretboards. Some bridges sold as rosewood (and ebony) are actually other softer woods, dyed to look like rosewood (or ebony). Much of the product coming from China is of some undetermined species, dyed. AFAIK the Graph Tech material is a composite of some unspecified material. You could call it plastic, if you define plastic as any material made from using organic materials. It's not the same as the plastic you see in most other applications. Many luthiers, Ken Parker being one of the better known, believe that lighter is better for archtop bridges. He uses real ebony, but hollows the bridge to make it as light as he possibly can and still maintain adequate strength. The Graph Tech bridges could theoretically be lighter and stronger than real wood, but I can't verify that. Having a flexible base with two separate feet makes fitting a matter of simply putting the bridge in place. It can sound better or worse, depending on the guitar. I've seen both happen, and I cannot consistently predict which version will sound better to me. And it still might sound worse to others. Good is entirely subjective. I have an archtop that needs a little tone help, so I just threw $50 at ebay to try one of the Resomax bridges. We shall see what we shall see (and hear).

[nicaguitar]

Rosewood is not soft, it has long been a standard for fretboards. Some bridges sold as rosewood (and ebony) are actually other softer woods, dyed to look like rosewood (or ebony). Much of the product coming from China is of some undetermined species, dyed. AFAIK the Graph Tech material is a composite of some unspecified material. You could call it plastic, if you define plastic as any material made from using organic materials. It's not the same as the plastic you see in most other applications. Many luthiers, Ken Parker being one of the better known, believe that lighter is better for archtop bridges. He uses real ebony, but hollows the bridge to make it as light as he possibly can and still maintain adequate strength. The Graph Tech bridges could theoretically be lighter and stronger than real wood, but I can't verify that. Having a flexible base with two separate feet makes fitting a matter of simply putting the bridge in place. It can sound better or worse, depending on the guitar. I've seen both happen, and I cannot consistently predict which version will sound better to me. And it still might sound worse to others. Good is entirely subjective. I have an archtop that needs a little tone help, so I just threw $50 at ebay to try one of the Resomax bridges. We shall see what we shall see (and hear).

from their FAQ: "resomax is made from a light proprietary alloy, equivalent to aluminum, as strong as steel". It also says the saddles are made out of PTFE: "PTFE is a fluorocarbon polymer with slippery, not sticking properties. It can be found in both our Black TUSQ XL nuts and our String Saver saddles. PTFE is 500% slipperier than Graphite." I assume the archtop bridge is made out of PTFE too, im not sure though.

[caue amaral]

Gibson ES-175 Bridges - ABR-1 vs Rosewood vs Graphtech Resomax (Video Test)

[RJVB]

from their FAQ: "resomax is made from a light proprietary alloy, equivalent to aluminum, as strong as steel". It also says the saddles are made out of PTFE

So the base (bridge) is made out something equivalent to aluminium (tungsten or magnesium alloy, maybe?) but the saddle is something related to teflon. Thanks but no thanks; I like the sound of carbonfluor strings but don't use them for the same ecological reasons.

[nicaguitar]

Gibson ES-175 Bridges - ABR-1 vs Rosewood vs Graphtech Resomax (Video Test)

Actually, this was the video that convinced me to buy the resomax, I wrote to you on instagram later to ask aditional questions !! Thank you so much!!

[Eck]

Just found another thread from 2015 on this forum where humbucker added his dismay over the archtop bridge. Not fitting his Eastman and not stiff enough to conform. Sound on sound has an excellent review on the tune-o-matic. Bridge impacts the sound a whole lot!!


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[sgosnell]

I'm not sure how "equivalent to aluminum and as strong as steel" is possible. I suppose it depends on what they define as equivalent. Equivalent in what way?

The Resomax bridge addressed by the FAQs appears to be for use on solid or semisolid body guitars, not archtops. The posts and bridge are metal, with PTFE saddles in a tune-o-matic format. I still haven't found much actual data about the archtop bridge.

I can't fathom what "not stiff enough to conform" even means. The stiffer a material is, the less it can conform. Stiffness prevents conformity, not the opposite. Too stiff to conform, perhaps, that makes sense, but Humbuckr makes none to me.

[Eck]

Different types, there’s a few tuneos there’s a wraparound, there’s an archtop. Archtop one is no individual intonation. Lighter steel in all but the archtop does a lot of good for the taste of many. Not sure about the archtop type yet…


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[Jx30510]

I have one that I like to test on all my guitars, but it never stays because to me it cuts out a lot of frequencies that make the sound kind of dull.
It does enhance the acoustic volume though.
It may work for a very bright and spiky guitar, but in my experience, and with my guitars, it eats life out of them. Just my thoughts, may work for others.

[nicaguitar]

I have one that I like to test on all my guitars, but it never stays because to me it cuts out a lot of frequencies that make the sound kind of dull.
It does enhance the acoustic volume though.
It may work for a very bright and spiky guitar, but in my experience, and with my guitars, it eats life out of them. Just my thoughts, may work for others.

I understand what your saying! It does cut alot of the high mid/high frequencies, but that was exactly what I was looking for for my guitar. Like I said, with the titanium saddle bridge I had to switch to flatwounds and roll the tone off because of those high frequencies that annoyed me, but now my tone knob is at 10 and it sound just where I want it. I will say though, I´ll probably switch back to roundwounds to compensate!

[nevershouldhavesoldit]

I'm not sure how "equivalent to aluminum and as strong as steel" is possible. I suppose it depends on what they define as equivalent.

I think it depends on what they define as strong. There are many properties rolled up in “strength”, eg hardness, tensile strength, compressive strength, ductility, elasticity, impact resistance, dimensional stability to heat / stress / vibration etc, and many others. And some have the opposite effect of others on the combination of toughness and durability that we generally think of as strength. For example, hardness seems stronger but it usually also means increased brittleness (which means increased likelihood of fracture under stress).

Elasticity, which is grossly misunderstood, simply means how much of a specified dimension (length, thickness, etc) a material will regain after it’s deformed by force. Tuning a string to a higher pitch stretches it in length - but its mass stays the same, so it is thinned a bit too. When you remove that string, it will have returned to almost (but not quite) its original length and thickness because it suffered some inelastic deformation. If you pull it hard enough to break it at a point not in contact with anything else (saddle, tailpiece, etc), you’ve exceeded its tensile strength.

Structural consistency is another strength factor, since the whole part is only as strong as its weakest area. String materials are not perfectly uniform throughout. So when you stretch a string and it thins a bit, it doesn’t thin uniformly, ie a 12 doesn’t become an 11.9 all long it’s length. It develops multiple areas of greater or lesser thinning and looks under magnification like a snake that ate a family of mice. This can be dramatic enough to affect intonation and is probably a common cause of a string that’s faulty right out of the box. And it’s almost certainly the cause of bad intonation that develops as a string ages in use. I suspect that the longevity I and others get from TI unwound strings compared to most others is because of more uniform diameter, fewer internal voids, smoother surface with fewer stress risers (micro cracks and irregularities that spread over time) when new and better resistance to developing them, etc. They’re “stronger” in large part because they’re less hard and more elastic.

Compression has the same effect. So a saddle or nut slot that’s too narrow for its string will open up a bit if the material is softer and more malleable, and inelastic deformation will maintain some of that extra space while elasticity will re-expand the material to reclaim some of it. But if the material is hard and brittle enough, it may simply crack or crumble enough to admit the string.

FWIW, two of the strongest materials in the world are paper and balsa wood. Both can support many more multiples of their weight than can steel, if fashioned into well designed structures. Roll up a sheet of paper and stand it on end - it’ll support a surprising amount of weight.

Q: Which is more elastic - a glass ball or a rubber one of the same size? A: the glass one. You can bounce both of them on a hard surface. With high speed photography, the amount that each compresses on contact with the surface can be measured, and the balls are measured again after the bounce. Glass deforms less than rubber because it’s harder, less ductile, and has more compressive strength. It doesn’t bounce as high because less energy is captured on compression and released as it re-expands. But it regains a greater percentage of its diameter at the point of impact - so it’s more elastic by definition. It’s also harder and more brittle, with less compressive strength. So it breaks on impact from a fall that doesn’t phase rubber.

We’ve all seen metal parts like bridges that sagged or otherwise deformed over time. They obviously failed to resist the forces under which they lived. Were they “strong” enough? It depends on how you define strong. Good guitar designers and makers balance all these properties against their effects on tone, stability, longevity, esthetics etc. The rest balance them against cost, ease of production, and the marketing appeal of undefined words like “strong” (and output power etc).