I created a prototype bass bridge/tuner today. The primary reason was ensuring that the range of the tuner was sufficient and then of course to just hold it and feel it since a 3D CAD drawing is pretty abstract. Here are a few pictures:
As you can see, I have not bothered making a knurled knob. The plunger that pulls the string is made from an M10 bolt. In production, it would be an M10x0.5 fine thread. The saddle is threaded M6x0.5 and is made from raw material from my guitar tuner plungers and will obviously look better in production and be made from stainless steel for durability.
I am grateful for receiving some comments over at Project Guitar. One is a request for being able to carry out intonation without slacking the string. I don’t have a good solution for this at the moment and am not sure if it is worth sacrificing the simplicity of the current design. I find that intonation is only necessary when changing brands of string and possibly at big changes in climate/temperature. Having said that: maybe a lot of you do experience this and need to intonate frequently? Please let me know the requirements so that I can come up with the best possible design.