Official Luthiers Forum!

    Too many guitars have exibited effects in tone and tension from varying the break angles at both ends of the string course for me to agree there Al. Break angle is a contributing factor in tension presented by the structure that the strings are suspended by.

   I wouldn't rule it out as a factor.
   

Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars

Kevin:
I make it a policy never to tell people what they hear: most of them hear so much better than I do, so I'm not saying you don't hear a difference with changes in break angle. My problem with it is that the normal way to change break angle is to change the height of the saddle off the top, and I can understand why that would change the tone. Do you hear the same sorts of changes when you ramp string slots?

There has been ongoing discussion about the forces acting on the guitar bridge, both static and dynamic. I've been working on measurements of the dynamic forces that the string puts on the saddle top. I've got some plans to look at changes in both saddle height and break angle at some point. At the moment I just can't see how changing the break anlge beyond a minimum can effect the tone, but I'll do my best to nail it down. As usual, there's a huge problem with isolating variables, and when that's complicated by fuzzy word usage it just gets confusinger and confusinger.

Al,
   Tonal effects are minimal with the changes to the break angles at either end of the string course. The more noticeable changes and the one I was pointing more to is in string tension.

   I agre that these things are affected by so many variables in structure and design and all of those are piled on top of the infinite variability of the wood components themselves that they're bnot worth a whole lot of discussion in print. Confusinger is right!

Kevin Gallagher/Omega Guitars