back of the body-5

First let’s look at the back of the body and of course the first thing you notice is the battery box with 6 AA batteries to supply the active circuit. Anyway, back to the bridge. Notice those nicely chiseled rectangular slots in the body, seems like there must be one for each string. Now as you flip through the pics you’ll see how those long rectangular metal bars fit into them.

Under tension, a string is pulling tight against the drum saddle, so that string is pulling on whatever that bar thing is it goes into. Look at the last pic and you see the metal bar has a notch, which makes the bar act as a lever under the tension of the string, and that forces the other side of the bar hard against the end grain of the wood at the core of body.

The bridge plate sits atop the two hex head posts, and they are threaded into the body wood to allow to bridge plate to be raised or lowered.

Seems to me we’re looking at Leo exploring how to get more string energy into end grain, and that was a huge focus with his later Music Man and G&L designs. All of those were far more robust and effective than this prototype. But that’s what what R&D is about, and that’s why Leo named his business CLF Research, Co.