Hi guys, was just wondering about biscuit bridges......I cant quite nail down whether the biscuit should be hardwood or not....am planning to use a metal type bridge over the biscuit.....any advice?....will probably use a dogs bowl or ashtary for the cone.....may thanx from downunder
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P.S. As for sound dog bowls differ enormously: some ring like a bell, some sound dead. Check them with a small hammer or the like!
Traditional resonators usually use a hard Maple biscuit, but there are also other materials available for biscuits. Carbon fiber is a new alternative to Maple.
Now, that being said, a dog bowl is stamped steel and not thin, spun aluminum like traditional cones. As a result, the optimum biscuit material may be something totally different. The thicker, smaller dog bowl, may require a good bit more energy transfer to make it "sing"
Like some of the other posts suggest, give different materials a try. A metal "fender"washer with a soldered steel bridge is certainly worth a try. Also, make sure you have a good bit of "break angle" over the bridge so that the strings apply good down pressure on the bridge. This will help with energy transfer.
With some experimentation, you should be able to find the best biscuit material.
You cannot take for granted that National-style biscuit bridges with maple biscuit and ebony bridge are the best solution even for traditional big resonator cones: my brother did a lot of experiments optimizing a gretsch honeydipper resonator: he ended up replacing the original maple biscuit with a big but thin steel washer with the outer diameter of the biscuit and a stag horn bridge. From own experiments with an Atchison seven inch cone with a rosewood biscuit I learnt a bone bridge be somewhat softer than a cylindric piece of brass. Feel free to check various combinations of biscuit and bridge, whether loose or glued together: let us hear about your findings for the cone you used for your build!
Ideally, the biscuit should be as hard a wood as you can, so the string vibration has little loss from bridge to cone, you can always dampen the sound, but hard to sharpen it up in my opinion