Stringed instrument having height-adjustable bridge assembly

Abstract

A stringed instrument such as a contrabass uses a height-adjustable bridge assembly for supporting strings under tension with a desired height, which is manually adjusted by a human operator. The bridge assembly is mainly constructed by a bridge whose lower end portion is forked to form a pair of legs and a pair of height-adjustment members, each of which is constructed by a screw rod and a foot. The legs of the bridge are respectively assembled together with the height-adjustment members being held inside of a hollow which is formed at a prescribed position and elongated in a direction roughly perpendicular to the strings being stretched on a belly of the stringed instrument. Herein, each leg has a hole formed with an internal thread which engages with an upper portion of the screw rod whose lower portion is buried in the foot which is held inside of the hollow in a free rotation manner. Hence, it is possible for the human operator to manually adjust a height of the bridge by merely rotating the feet within the hollow on the stringed instrument while temporarily loosening the strings. Because of elimination of adjustment screws, it is possible to construct the bridge assembly with a reduced number of parts as compared with conventional ones. In addition, metal parts (i.e., screw rods) are completely hidden inside of wood parts of the bridge assembly to provide least resistance in visuality.