Is it just me?

I fitted & glued a bridge to a soprano today and when I removed the clamp it looked slanting ..But when I carefully measured it, it was spot on
I put it down to the grain lines in the top causing an optical elusion and making it look skewwhiff...or I need an eye test.

No, it's not just you, Ken. It's the grain direction causing an optical illusion. It only has to be a smidgen out of true and it can make the bridge look wonky.

That's my excuse, anyway!

John Colter

Timbuck said:

.But when I carefully measured it, it was spot on

Click to expand...

Well it depends on where and how you measure it which is not necessarily so easy. I measure off the sides of the neck at the 10th fret to the respective sides of the bridge. Now if the neck is not exactly on your reference center line and a bit off it can mislead you to think the bridge is exactly square to the body when it is actually exactly square to the nut and a little wonky to the body. I hope that isn't confusing. This is why I take great pains to get the neck lined up exactly square to the center line of the body. As we all know, error is proportional to distance so even a slight error at the top of the peghead will multiple over the distance to the bridge. I try to keep it to at most only off by a millimeter at the top of the peghead to the center line reference in a tenor scale length uke. Any more and the bridge starts to tilt off axis.

I once reglued a bridge slightly off, however it was exactly what was needed for spot on compensation. Still it looked weird.