Official Luthiers Forum!

I am new to guitar building.....just working on my third now......and I am intrigued by pinless bridges. I can see that there might be some good and bad things about them, and I wonder if anyone wants to give their opinions, for or against? I am still on the fence about it.

Don't use a design where the strings pass through holes in the bridge. Setup is a huge pain if you can't get the saddle out of the slot without unwinding all the strings completely from the tuners.

These for example? (with or without the posts)

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

I think Dennis was referring to Ovation, Lowden, Breedlove type of pinless bridge. I agree that it is annoying that you usually need to fully remove the string at the headstock to work on the saddle with that design. The Mike Doolin "hang off a pin" design that Colin shows actually allows for super-fast string disconnection at the bridge; even faster than pulling a pin.
One comment with pinless bridges is that you don't necessarily need a bridge plate - but the jury is out on that. Some makers use a pinless bridge but add a bridgeplate too, arguing that added stiffness in that region is good. Some others don't add one, arguing that it is not needed if there are no string ends and pins going through the top. A pinless bridge could increase rotational force and make it more likely for the bridge to pull off. It seemed to happen quite a bit with Takamine pinless bridges, but a lot of those guitars also had cedar tops and that makes bridge glue fail more likely too.

I'm in the repair business and we see all of the implementations of pinless bridges from George Lowden to the plethora of small builders who come and go.

If you are new to guitar building I would strongly suggest that you build at least a few conventionally designed and constructed guitars so that you have ample support available to learn and fully understand the concepts that are present AND super important in bridge design.

When I was a new builder I became obsessed with a new bridge design and as much as I liked what I came up with it's also a monument to some mistakes that I made because I did not understand the following well enough to properly employ them in my design:

1) Break angles which is at times, not always something that pinless designs suffer from, insufficient break angle that a blue grass player and heavy hitter can drive the vibrating wave of a hard hit string right over and past the crown of the saddle.....

2). Serviceability - does the pinless design impede serviceability as Dennis rightly suggested above. Most pinless designs I can still remove the saddle(s) just by loosening the strings and that is important.

3). Pinless designs are not necessarily any more prone to lifting than a conventional design but that glue joint and how it's glued needs to be top notch and very well done. This is really true of any bridge design.

4). If the perimeter design is complex such as a g*bson mustache bridge your clients will hate you come bridge reglue time. A Luthier will have to work around that complex perimeter to clear additional finish or repair same from the thing lifting. It's just way easier to keep the perimeter foot print simple.

So look half the people who come here are interested in a better mousetrap and often fascinated with employing something new and I have seen it time and time and time again here and I engaged in this myself as well. But truth be told the conventionally built acoustic guitar such as a Martin or Collings are pretty hard to beat when it comes to how they perform, the value offered and the down time over time from the engineering and design.

And lastly George Lowden kind of painted himself in a bit of a corner with no offense intended with the split saddle design. He's not the only one either. That severely limited the availability of after market pick-ups that can be installed in one of his guitars. We put a Lyric in a Lowden recently and that is a recommended pup for Lowden instruments and both the owner and us thought it sounded terrible.... Not being critical of George he is a fantastic and accomplished Luthier and I love his stuff and would love to own one myself. I am simply trying to introduce you to the concept of serviceability and the fact that someday it may not be you who has your hands in the sound hole of a guitar you created. How to service it, parts availability, etc should not let any future clients of your's down. I'll add I never expected to sell a single guitar and said so many times here but that's not how it worked out....

Welcome to the forum and if I can ever help feel free to contact me, I co-own Ann Arbor Guitars and my business partner and I have built over 250 guitars between the two of us and we do well over 1,000 guitar repairs annually. So we live this stuff 24/7. It's 6:30 AM and I'm still thinking about Lutherie....

I think pinless bridges have their place, and some pinless designs have been around for centuries. Classical guitars and many of the early guitars used pinless bridges that used a tie block. For the lower tension these bridges are under this has worked out fine. The bridges that use a tailpiece, such as those found on archtop guitars allow some of the forces acting on the bridge to be transferred to the tail block area.
The advantage of the pinned bridge is that it allows some of the force to act on the bridge plate and soundboard rather than the bridge alone.
Pinless bridges often use a larger footprint to distribute the forces over a larger area of the soundboard.
I use a pinless bridge on my travel guitar design that also uses a detachable neck, because I need the strings to be easily removed and replaced at the bridge. It has gone through a couple of iterations, the latest of which uses a taller tie block area with individual string recesses for a stronger design.

removed

Th one in Colin North's post was, so far as I know, devised by Jeff Elliot, and used on the harp guitar that he and Sullivan collaborated on for John Doan. The pins are not there to take the string tension: that's done by the ball end bearing on the brass tube that lines the hole. The pin just keeps the ball end from flipping sideways and popping out. It doesn't need to be strong; I usually use 1/16" brass rod for those.

Aside from getting the holes, liner, and pins the right size, you also need to see that the holes are angle back a bit. The string tension pulls the ball end down into the hole and keeps the string in place. When you want to replace it you just loosen the string and push it back, and it pops right out. You put in the new string and hold it down with a finger tip as you start tensioning it, until the ball grabs.

Thanks Alan, for correcting my mis-identification of that method.

Thank you to all who took time to respond.......I am thinking I will take a leap of faith, and build one with the pinless bridge similar to the one in Colin's post.....I am busy researching it, and feel confident about it.

Please show us your progress, I have need of Pinless bridges in future...

Pinless bridges limit the options available for clamping the bridge during gluing -- as do narrow or small or significantly offset soundholes.

That's easy to control - - - buy a bridge with countersunk holes for 1/4" MOP dots and drill locating pin holes there, or drill locating pin holes that will be covered by the same MOP dots after the bridge is installed. Worked for me.

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Peter Havriluk

Here’s an oval sound hole with a pinless bridge on a crossover. I install temporary indexing pins in the saddle slot and use a vacuum fixture for the glue-up. Works a treat!

M

Same here

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Jim Watts
http://jameswattsguitars.com

That is a beautiful top!

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.