New Member building solid body ubass, bridge question

Hi all, new guy here. I build a few instruments, got off into ubass, but this my first solid body. It's mesquite and Texas ebony. Working that stuff is fun, but that's another story. So my bridge now sits flush with the top of the body, no thumb wheels, so here's the question: Does there need to be space under the bridge (as if thumb wheels were holding it up) or flush good to go. I'm wondering if there is some piezo related reasons that you want the bridge more or less floating and unimpeded by the mass of the body. I see both (best I can tell) on searching the net for pics. Thanks, and I'll post up some of my other builds soon.

As far as I know, and I'm no expert, having an adjustable bridge is to be able to control the action (distance of the strings from the frets) and the intonation at the 12th fret. None of my acoustic bass ukes have an adjustable bridge, all of my solid body have an adjustable bridge. It seems to me that the intonation and action on the non-adjustable bridge can be controlled by adding or removing shims, or sand down the saddle, depending on what's appropriate.

---

8 tenor cutaway ukes, 3 acoustic bass ukes, 8 solid body bass ukes, 7 mini electric bass guitars

• Donate to The Ukulele Kids Club, they provide ukuleles to children's hospital music therapy programs. http://www.theukc.org
• Member The CC Strummers: https://www.youtube.com/user/CCStrummers/videos

Thanks for the answer and I get it. I know what an adjustable bridge is for. My question is about needed space under it for the piezo in it. If it's locked down solid to the body, will it "hurt" the sound pick-up performance. My plan was to just put a couple of black screws in the ends and lock it down solid (after making sure intonation is right), but then I saw how the others are a got to thinking...dangerous isn't it..

I have seen some floating bridges about the size of a fixed wooden bridge you might see on an acoustic with the rod piezo under the saddle and a small gap for the cable to feed through to the pre-amp. The strings are fixed through the body about an inch and a half behind where the uncompensated scale length would be and adjusted for the width of the bridge. This would allow easy adjustment for compensation.