We were having a lively jam session last night, nearing the point where the early leavers start packing up and disappearing, I think the tune was Banish Misfortune, when what, to everyone’s surprise should happen but a huge “!BANG!”
No, we were not the victims of a drive by bricking, it was my bass, vomitting forth the bridge, which had just seconds before been functionally situated on its elderly Kay bass belly, and was now tooling across the floor… hmmm… No lives were lost, no bruises gained, but I guess it’s time to replace that poor old thing… LOL!
It’s probably repairable by a competent luthier, but of course, if you’ve been looking for an excuse to upgrade your instrument, then I didn’t say anything…
Maybe no real damage was done at all. The bridge is not fastened by any means other than the string tension so if it gets more than a little out of vertical placement, that can happen. Some instruments seem to have this tendency more than others and tuning the strings can pull the on the bridge instead of just sliding over it. You can visually scope to see if the bridge is out of perpendiclar and grasping both sides near the top of the bridge, gently pull it back to where it’s straight.
Ditto to what Miwokhill said. I have fitted a lot of string bridges. Bridges are under a lot of compression, so they need to be kept straight (not bowed) and nearly perpendicular to the top. Bridges can suddenly flip out of position if they are not straight. Also, continuing to play an instrument with a bridge that is badly bowed, because of the player’s failure to keep the bow straight, may cause the bridge to crack, in which case it will need to be replaced by a competent repairperson. The feet of the bridge need to be shaped to the curved top, and this is somewhat tricky to do correctly. Just putting a new bridge in place without fitting the feet will cause damage to the top, and I have seen this done frequently.
Thanks for your input folks… but this bridge has been warped since I got the bass 20 some years ago… And the bass itself is suffereing … probably the bass bar is separated, as the soundpost is making effort to come through the back. We’re taking the top off, putting a patch at the back and re-doing the bass bar. Hopefully, after that, regluing, refastening places wehre the venier is loose, and putting a nice new finish on it, it will be at least as good as when I got it, and will look a whole lot better.
The warp-age was one thing, but with the top sinking in spots it’s not meant to, the pressure on the poor old bridge finally did its thing. The feet on the bridge are so out of line now that it is a wonder it still played at all. When I changed the strings a couple of weeks ago, I felt that the bridge warpage was not significantly worse than before, and these new strings would be less pressure… it was only then that I noticed the sound post problem. We were already planning on redoing it. This was just such an exciting way to get there… beats the heck out of a couple of alternatives that I can now imagine… Amazing what we don’t notice and then think… “how could I not have seen that???”… but honestly, it didn’t look like an iminent danger…
So, I get to use the shop bass for a little while… not too bad.