Bridge, Tie Block, and Saddle Assembly

You probably can’t tell from the photo, but you’re looking at one of the most important working parts of my acoustic-electric Córdoba Fusion 5: the bridge, tie block, and saddle assembly. It may look like a fairly simple strip of wood, but acoustically it is the point where the vibrating strings hand their energy over to the guitar. When you pluck a string, the string by itself moves very little air and would consequently be rather quiet. The vibration travels through the saddle into the bridge, and the bridge transfers that energy into the spruce soundboard. The much larger soundboard then vibrates and moves the air that produces most of the guitar’s acoustic volume. That makes the bridge a kind of mechanical coupling between the strings and the guitar’s resonating body.