fender FM-52E SB

[tacklebox455]

I have a fender FM-52E SB the bridge is messed up and everyone i get is a wood bridge i am hopeing someone can tell me where to find a bridge to fit this mandolin that is cover in brass or some other type of metal or compound any help would be great help thankyou

[fishtownmike]

Are you talking about the bridge or the tailpiece? This is the electric acoustic model. As far as i know the bridge is wood.

[allenhopkins]

Mandolin bridges aren't exactly like guitar bridges, which usually have plastic, bone or metal saddles directly under the strings. Almost all mandolin bridges are wood, with maple, rosewood and ebony being the most common kinds. Not sure what you mean by "messed up," but I'd advise a visit to a repair shop to let a qualified tech have a look at it.

[fishtownmike]

The only thing i can think of is if someone added a bridge overlay like this.

[mandroid]

Gibson in the early 20's shipped some mandolins with an upper portion of the bridge,
machined of of Aluminum, [overlay?] { I own a brown '21 A like that}

that is what Mike is showing in the above photo. #4,
auction sales on those are likely to want more than you paid for your whole FM 52,

so I'd suggest getting a strip of Aluminum and some files and get busy, replicating one ..

a piece of 1/4" by about a 1/4" wide, 2-3/4" long should be sufficient ..

[Fran Ledoux]

The wood used on these pieces is not the greatest for a mando bridge (or any other kind of bridge for that matter). I'm assuming that the saddle on the bridge is either collapsing or cracked which is typical as I've seen this many times since they came out. In any event, a new rosewood or ebony bridge will need to be fitted by a qualified repair tech to get things where they should be.

[tacklebox455]

first the bridge being messed up i was refering to the bridge its self the high e side of the bridge the string form playing has worn thru the wood so i put a new one own and hour and a half later same problem like the last post said this factory word bridge sucks and wound'nt be great for anything but firewood as far as an overlay that would be fine but i have seen many mandolins with a wood bridge wrapped in brass,copper,and aluimnum eveyone told me they got these from stewmac.com i had contacted them and they said they had never had anything like that and to come here and talk to people on mandolin cafe and i cant ask the mandolin players that i had asked this because they didnt live here they had just came to compete in or fiddlers convention in athens alabama,

so anyway i had looked at ebony and rosewood but wasnt sure but from what i have seen you guys talk about thats what most mandolins have on them so i guess i will go get one of those and try it.

thanks for the help guys

[allenhopkins]

Good luck! I agree with Stew-Mac in that I've only seen metal bridge saddles on those '20's vintage Gibsons that had the factory aluminum bridges. Interesting that your mandolin E strings have cut through your bridge saddle twice; you might want to have a repair shop just take an overall look at it. Not a problem I've seen myself...