The Crow Hill Company has released a new installment in the Vaults series of free instrument libraries.
Bridge Guitar faithfully recreates the muting of the bridge of a detuned parlour guitar, a novel way of treating guitars pioneered by LA luthier Rueben Cox.
The rubber bridge is a distinctive lowfi acoustic innovation pioneered by LA luthier Ruben Cox from his shop in Silverlake since the early 2010s. Cox salvaged inexpensive vintage acoustic guitars from brands such as Harmony, K, and Silvertone and replaced the wooden saddle with a rubber slab. This created a muted percussive tone which was reminiscent of a pizzicato on a cello or violin. This unusual sound caught on when Perfume Genius used it in his 2017 album Slip Away drew in artists like Jeff Tweedy from Wilco, Madison Cunningham, Phoebe Bridgers, and Taylor Swift on her album Folklore.
The rubber bridge sharply dampens sustain and high frequencies which makes it very ideal for vocal based music because it allows the voice to really shine on top of the guitar. In recent years, indie artists have embraced it not just in a studio context but also on Tik Tok using rubber bands using foam clamps, Babalat tennis racket dampeners in order to approximate the sound without having to permanently alter their guitars.
Bridge Guitar is free to download and use in the Crow Hill App (also free).
More information: The Crow Hill Company
