The rubber bridge concept is building serious momentum! If you haven't tried one, you are missing out.
It all started when some LA session players started exploring different sounds. Many guitars are designed for sustain and resonance, but the rubber bridge does the complete opposite—it deadens the string and gives you a smoother and mellower, more attack-oriented sound. Some players describe it as a "plucked string" or "palm mute" sound, almost like a banjo or perhaps a harp or pizzicato violin. In practice, the rubber bridge adds new colors to your sonic palette, and it provides its own unique source of inspiration, too.
Denver-based luthier Matt McGibney is build his own reputation across the Colorado music scene. You can see his custom guitars on stage with Drive-By Truckers, Nathaniel Rateliff, and many others. While McGibney builds a variety of custom instruments, he also loves improving old guitars by converting them into Rubber Bridge hot rod rigs.
Although they are made out of old American-made acoustic parlors, these Rubber Bridge Conversions are intended to be plugged in. When you combine a high-output humbucker or piezo with the rubber bridge, the interaction is magic. It sounds great with effects, and it gives you a different timbre to explore new musical passages.
In converting the vintage parlor husk into a rubber bridge, McGibney also greatly improves the playability and overall functionality of the guitar. If you're going to the trouble of making a rubber bridge, the guitar needs to ring clear and true all the way down the fingerboard, so McGibney resets the neck and re-planes/re-frets the fingerboard. He also upgrades the nut and tuning machines before rigging up a trapeze tailpiece and his own design of rubber bridge.
This guitar started its life as a '50s parlor, likely a Kay-branded department store special. With a high-output humbucker in the soundhole and a hot piezo under the bridge, there's plenty of rubber bridge territory to explore.