Dodson Old Wood / Air Dried Bridges

Every now and then you get a rare opportunity to make a splash in the banjo market place. The wood out of which these banjo bridges are made come from various locations and carefully salvaged, graded and hand selected for its acoustic properties and responsiveness making these banjo bridges some of the best ever produced.

I get to work on some of the rarest and most expensive banjos on the planet and I know good tone when I hear it. Some of the same reasons that those old instruments sound so amazing is why these bridges also pump out amazing and even power and clarity from the lowest growling open 4th string to that screaming punch at the 22nd fret.

Only hot hide glue is used to attach seasoned ebony tops and if the wood didn’t sound good to me when I was handling it, it got turned into jigs or tossed into the scrap box. I never use curly or birds-eys and other figured wood for my bridges. Only straight-grained maple. That allows vibrations to transmit more freely. Curl and other anomalies in wood reroute the vibrations and scatter or bounce sound waves and that can pinch the tone of your banjo, in my opinion.

-Ritchie Dotson