Emerald’s new bridge design

[David Eastwood]

There’s been some chatter on a Facebook group about Emerald’s new 6-saddle bridge design, and a few comments here, also.

I thought those of you who won’t see the FB comments might be interested in Mr. Hay’s recent contribution to the discussion:

“Well I didn't think it would take too long before this bridge created some discussion.
I first used these saddles a few years ago on a custom 8 string fan fret guitar and the results were fantastic so I filed the idea away for future use.
My main motivation behind this innovation is to allow the user the ability to easily adjust action and intonation to suit their desired needs. Different strings need different Intonation points and that generally needs a different saddle. Different playing styles will require different saddle heights which again requires a different saddle. With this bridge its a matter of minutes to adjust a bridge to your liking with nothing more than a screwdriver.
Its simple and effective.
But of course we are building acoustic guitars so it has to perform acoustically.
The carbon design is very light weight and possibly a little lighter than our standard bridge and transmits the string energy very nicely into the top. The Graphtech saddles also transmit the string energy very well into the guitar and give great tonal properties.
In tests we have discovered this bridge to be slightly louder and more resonant than our standard bridge.
Believe me I wouldnt be building this if it didn't perform.
Then there is the pickup capabilities. Pickups are always a problem on acoustic guitars but with these individual saddles we have been having fantastic results on the X10 for the past few years.
So far we have been putting this new fully adjustable acoustic bridge on the X10 but we will be offering it on all our 6 string guitars in 2021 and we have developed a design that combines these piezo saddles with a K&K pure mini which sounds amazing in the X20.
We have put a huge number of hours into developing this in the past 4 months and I'm delighted that it has been so well received by almost everyone who has seen it.
Of course this will be an option along side a conventional bridge but I do expect the adjustable bridge to be very popular”

This will be interesting to follow. CF guitars, and Emerald in particular, are becoming the Mythbusters of the acoustic guitar world.

[esimms86]

The new bridge saddles are an interesting concept, to be sure, and we wonÂ’t know what the consensus is until enough of them are out in the wild. Emerald is right to offer it as a non standard option, as these kind of saddles, though common in the electric guitar world, smack of heresy in the acoustic guitar world. Which is not to say that they donÂ’t work for acoustic guitars but, rather, that they represent a serious break with tradition(and most guitarists swear by what they have grown accustomed to over their guitar playing lives).

Emerald, being a small company, is perfectly positioned to do this, as the risk to them is minuscule relative to a Martin or Taylor.

IÂ’m interested to see just how long it takes for someone to commission an Emerald with these saddles and a moderate action to be used as a platform for playing acoustic and electric slide guitar.

Beyond that, this type of design looks to leave a buyer with the option of Graphtech piezos or maybe no acoustic pickup at all(yes, you can use an internal microphone but not, say, an LR Baggs Element/Anthem or a Schatten HFN, at least as far as I can see).

Anyway, good for you, Emerald, for continuing to push the envelope. I look forward of reading and seeing some reviews of this new design and I also look forward to seeing some demos from folks like Mark Black and Davy K.

[Methos1979]

The combination of the individual piezo under saddle pickups with a K&K is very interesting. I always went for the K&K with my custom Emeralds and while they were decent they were also challenging to get great tone from, like with any guitar I installed just a K&K alone on. But combining it with something else might just be what it needs. I've said all along that I wish I could get the Cole Clark three-way pickup system installed on an Emerald X20. It would make for a perfect system. I love that Emerald continues to innovate. I love the new changes to the X20 and if they continue to do so then at some date in the hopefully near future I'd love to see them come up with some sort of proprietary multi-source pickup system that runs through an onboard preamp with EQ and notch. I'd be the first in line for a custom build with that!