Some electric guitars have an extended bridge for their tremolo system, named a tailed bridge guitar because of its shape. Most of these tailed bridge guitars were designed in the sixties and used in surf music. The first tailed bridge guitars were designed by Leo Fender; the Fender Jaguar and the Fender Jazzmaster, both of which became popular among surf rock groups in the early to mid 1960s. It became popular again in the 1990s when it was used by a number of alternative rock players.

Contents 1 Behind the bridge 2 List of tailed bridge guitars 3 Musical examples with sounds of strings plucked behind the bridge 4 See also

[edit] Behind the bridge

Surf musicians preferred this guitar because the resonance behind the bridge generates extra acoustic reverb based on string resonance. In addition, large "divebomb" tremolos played on clean guitars were a large part of many Surf guitarists' technique. In the 1990s many shoegaze, noise rock and post rock bands such as My Bloody Valentine, Sonic Youth and Slint began playing on tailed bridge guitars for their special possibilities. Tailed bridge guitars have a primitive third bridge mechanism in their floating bridge with limited timbre when used in an extended technique. When the strings are strummed behind the bridge, a unique chiming sound is created that has come to be associated with Sonic Youth. In some ways these sounds are reminiscent of the sounds of a musical box, because of their often high pitches. Even when strumming in front of the bridge, the long string length behind the bridge coupled with the low break angle over the bridge functions as a "sink" for vibrational energy, producing sympathetic resonance which can function as a counterpoint when power chords are played on different string pairs. Experimental luthier Yuri Landman created a tailed bridge guitar called the Springtime for Laura-Mary Carter of Blood Red Shoes. The tail on this instrument has a mathematical relation of 1/5th of the string length of the open string. This distance causes a tone of two octaves and a major third higher than the open string, similar to the fifth harmonic. For Mauro Pawlowski of dEUS he made an alternate version with an additional pick up in the tail to explore the possibilities of creating third bridge sounds. This pick up has a separate output. Also for Enon he created an alternate version called the Twister, with an extended tail piece generating approximately a double octave tone, because the tail piece is 1/4th of the length of the played field.

[edit] List of tailed bridge guitars

• Antoria 994 (1963)
• Eastwood Delta 6
• Eko 700 4V, a cutaway Eko was manufactured in Italy by Oliviero Pigini in 1964/5 and was the "modern" version (and now more rare) of their top of the range plastic covered solids - first marketed by Rose Morris in the UK in 1963.
• Epiphone Casino
• Fender Jaguar
• Fender Jazzmaster
• Fenton Weill Dualtone (19620 design from Jim Burns's ex-partner, Henry Weill, after their split.
• Framus Strato Delux, built by Framus in Bavaria (Germany) in the mid 60s features chrome and tiger stripe scratchplates, a Bill Lawrence organ swell function and a bridge damper.
• Hagstrom Futurama Coronado Automatic (1963) Only about 200 built specially by Hagstrom to the requirements of Ben Davis - owner of the Selmer company in London.
• Hofner 172 (1963)
• Musima Deluxe 25, a guitar from the DDR (East Germany) built in the late 70s and similar to the Eglita.
• Rosetti Airstream 11, built by Egmond in the Netherlands, this Rosetti Airstream 11 was a starter guitar for 1960s UK musicians. The Rosetti Lucky 7 semi was used by Paul McCartney in his Hamburg days.
• Rosetti Lucky Squir, dating from around 1960/1 and built in Holland by Egmond, this starter semi-hollow was marketed in the UK under the Rosetti brand name.
• Springtime, Yuri Landman
• SX SJM
• Tele-Star H1, originally Tele-Star hollow body guitars were built by Kawai in Japan between 1967-1970 and imported by Tele-Star Musical Instrument Company of New York.
• Teisco Del Rey, built in Japan and dating from the late 60s.
• Teisco EV-2T, a 1969 copy of the Vox Phantom. After Teisco was taken over by Kawai in 1967, the company concentrated on copies including of Vox and Burns guitars branded as Kawai, Del-Rey and Teisco.
• Twister, alternate version of the Springtime with an extended tail piece and an additional pickup in the tail.
• Eastwood Hi-Flyer
• Univox Hi-Flier
• Vox Shadow (1962)
• Vox Phantom

This section requires expansion.

[edit] Musical examples with sounds of strings plucked behind the bridge

• The Cure - Siamese Twins (on Pornography)
• Enon - Paperweights (on Grass Geysers...Carbon Clouds)
• Nirvana - You Know You're Right
• Slint - Good Morning, Captain (on Spiderland)
• Sonic Youth - Bull in the Heather

This section requires expansion.

[edit] See also

• 3rd Bridge
• Aliquot stringing
• Bigsby vibrato tailpiece
• Prepared guitar
• String Resonance

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