Schaller-Steg „Hannes“

The new Schaller "Hannes" bridge: the best of all worlds, a magnificent combination of innovation and sound of the highest quality - premium standard and no frills.

Schaller is striking an entirely new chord with its revolutionary new "Hannes" bridge. Don't entrust your tone to just anyone. An ideal connection starts with a good beginning - the Schaller "Hannes" bridge. Schaller precision machine heads provide a good end to that connection.

Read all about the unique new Schaller "Hannes" bridge here.

BEST OF ALL WORLDS

Schaller’s “Hannes” Bridge

Schaller presents the guitar bridge of the future!
(US Patent #7071398/European Patent application submitted)

The Key Facts

By far the most comfortable bridge on the market.
The perfect combination of sound properties of all bridge constructions on the market.
The sound is characterised by fine high notes and quick responsiveness, with distinct, powerful and even playback.
Contact-friendly material and a comfortably designed, edgeless surface.
Non-wearing due to the lack of metallic coatings.
Both fresh and subdued in appearance, it further emphasises the guitar’s premium design.

The Innovations

Each string is fed via a separate coupler unit individually adjustable in terms of intonation and height (saddle/string plate)..
The individual couplers lie flat on the guitar surface.
The bridge unit vibratory mass has been minimised.
The bridge is low-maintenance and is comfortable to play.

This new high-tech guitar bridge was developed over a number of years by Roland Hannes, a French inventor now living in California. Thanks to a partnership formed together with the world’s most renowned hardware manufacturer, Schaller Electronics, it can now be produced and supplied on a large scale.

The Schaller “Hannes” Bridge Innovations in Detail

Each string is fed via a separate coupler which is individually adjustable in terms of intonation and height.

While conventional guitar bridges feed all six strings via a common carrier, be it a Tune-O-Matic bridge or bridges with an integrated base plate, Schaller’s “Hannes” bridge follows a new logic.
With this revolutionary concept, each string is fed via a separate coupler unit with individually adjustable intonation and height. It lies directly on the guitar surface and is free of intermediate elements such as stud screws, threaded studs or metal plates. This decouples the vibration of the individual strings from the neighbouring strings, allowing it to be transferred directly and independently to the guitar body.

The advantage of this system over those where all of the vibrating strings share a common carrier, is obvious:

If the strings are in a common carrier, then each of the individual vibrations is subject to the physical influence of the other vibrating strings in the group, thus compromising their harmonious response. This has undesirable crosstalk effects - the acoustic energy between the strings is nullified and/or, alternately, strengthened.

Not so with Schaller’s “Hannes” bridge. Here, every string vibrates on its own because all of the transfer points, namely the bridge, are consistently decoupled from one another. This improves the harmony response and the “string-to-string definition”.

The individual bridges lie flat on the guitar surface.

A further improvement over conventional designs is the larger contact surface over which the vibrations are carried from the bridge to the body. Depending on the design, the coupling with conventional bridges is via tiny stud screws or knife edge tabs only. Therefore, these types of small transfer surfaces are also known as “micro-coupling”.

In this context, if you consider the classic string instrument construction which has been based for centuries on the ideal vibration coupling of string and body, the generous dimensions of the contact surface between the bridge and the top makes sense. This is precisely the case with the most expensive jazz guitars, and with good reason!

Here, too, Schaller’s “Hannes” bridge offers a true innovation:
Despite being individually adjustable for height and length (octave clarity), the couplers lie flat and stable on the guitar surface and thus ensure the optimal transfer of the entire vibration spectrum to the instrument. Micro-coupling causes inadequate transfer of those very deep frequencies in particular, which are considered essential in electric guitars today. With this, Schaller’s “Hannes” bridge is an innovation you can truly hear.

The bridge unit vibratory mass has been minimised.

Inventor Roland Hannes took another step towards further optimising the acoustic responsiveness. He addressed the issue of mass – that means the reduction of the vibratory mass of the bridge unit. His findings: the lower the vibratory mass, the quicker the tuning process and the lower the loss in the transfer of the sound spectrum to the instrument, from the lowest frequencies right up to the harmonics. The result is a direct, audible and tangible gain in dynamics.

His quest took him to the Canadian company Graph Tech.
Hence the use of the latest composite material – heat-treated high-performance polymers with Teflon, known as “String Saver” - a patented development by Graph Tech. This revolutionary new composite material provides a further elementary advantage in addition to the remarkably low specific weight of 1.75 g/ccm* along with its tremendous rigidity and resistance.

Due to the incorporation of Teflon, the “String Saver” ensures astoundingly little friction on the string contact points, as if they were constantly being lubricated. The metal saddles generally used on guitar bridges (regardless of whether steel, aluminium or bronze) are not without their problems, because the strings gradually cut a narrow, sharp-edged groove in the surface, in which they ultimately become caught and can break as a result of fatigue fractures.

The “String Saver” string bridge’s lower friction counters the much feared risk of broken strings very effectively. At the same time the sustain, i.e. the reverberation of the vibrating strings against the steel saddles, is extended by about 15%, and by about 25% when compared to bronze saddles.

The bridge is low-maintenance and comfortable to play.

The design of Schaller’s “Hannes” bridge means that it has no protruding screws, edges or spikes at all and the flat design guarantees outstanding playing comfort. Unlike coated metals, the surface is comfortably warm and completely resistant to the usual problems like hand perspiration and oxidation. At the same time, the use of Teflon means that the bridge offers a high degree of tuning stability.

Unlike with metal feeds, the strings can no longer become caught in grooves (one of the most proven frequent causes of tuning problems).

The revolutionary and consistent “form follows function” design available in nickel, chrome, gold, black chrome, ruthenium and satin chrome also ensures an image which is as contemporary as it is future-oriented.

In conclusion, it must be mentioned that the bridge does not require any notches on the body surface at all. It is easily dismantled for cleaning and needs only a small perforated rail on the rear of the body to fix the ball ends of the strings, as well as two lock screws in order to secure is tightly

* Reference values:

Magnesium 1,74 g/ccm
Black TUSQ 1,75 g/ccm
Bone 1,80 g/ccm
Ivory 1,88 g/ccm
Aluminium 2,70 g/ccm

Special thanks go to Mr. Thomas Amberger, master guitar-builder from the Oberpfalz in Bavaria, for building the first guitar with a Schaller "Hannes" bridge exclusively for us. Built out of the finest woods with the perfection that can be expected of Mr. Amberger, it has already become a historical collector's item!

Schaller-Bridge
Further images are available in our product catalog.

Your hand confirms what your eyes can see: The quality of the materials, the precision of every detail, the outstanding craftsmanship.

The new Schaller "Hannes" bridge can be seen in the montage on the back

We supply the "Hannes" bridge complete with the following accessories.

Graph Tech makes high performance guitar components for the discerning musician. From finger pickers to shredders, some of the world's best-known musicians have come to rely on Graph Tech components for their tone, performance, and creative expression.

Detailed technical illustarations of the new Schaller "Hannes" bridge can be found as usual by going to our online catalogue and selecting the detailed product view.

Click on the pictures to view the full-size images.