Bridge Pins, Saddle and slotting

[unclrob]

Quote broKen
"As for ramping the bridge, I thought that was done to increase the downward pressure on saddles that have been lowered so much that the break angle of the string over the bridge was insufficient"

Thats the reason,spot on.

[BenF]

I bought bridge pins that were not slotted right to the top, and ramped the bridge sufficiently to seat them properly. This improved the break angle over the saddle too, and did improve sustain noticeably.

I would recommend it, but only if you are very confident in your own skills. As Rob said, it's much more difficult to undo it!!!

I like to tinker like this, but I make sure I do my homework exhaustively first. I also have a fender acoustic that I resurrected from the dead (with help form people on here) and it provided a good learning curve.

[Zohn]

  Ben and Rob.
I've used my Walden GA to do various experimenting - worked on the nut, shaved some material off the bridge, did the ramping, levelled frets, I even did a mild neck re-set on it. That guitar is set up optimally now to the point where I can't put it down.

[GGBB]

After reading this topic and some of the linked articles, I'm now thinking about slotting my bridge.  One question - is there any problem with using the stock pins and just rotating them 180 degrees so that the groove faces back and the string side is ungrooved?  Or is it important to have the hole completely filled (for either secureness or sonic reasons)?

[cbarclay]

After reading this topic and some of the linked articles, I'm now thinking about slotting my bridge.  One question - is there any problem with using the stock pins and just rotating them 180 degrees so that the groove faces back and the string side is ungrooved?  Or is it important to have the hole completely filled (for either secureness or sonic reasons)?

Hey Gord, when I slot my guitars and I don't have new unslotted pins available I just turn them 90 degrees and it works just fine and acts no differently than an unslotted pin.  I believe Bryan Kimsey suggested doing that.  You don't want to turn them 180 degrees because the slot would be pushed to the other side of the hole and may cause a little slack in the way the pins fit.  Make sense?  I've also just filled the pin slot with superglue or epoxy (though it's not necessary) until I could buy some unslotted pins.

[GGBB]

Thanks Chris.      90 degrees does make more sense.  I had thought about using epoxy too - I will probably do that and if it works well I won't bother replacing the pins.

[cbarclay]

Gord, I thought a little more about the epoxy and I don't think I'm going to try that again.  Reason being, it may add a little weight to the pins that may affect the tone.  I seriously doubt it would be noticeable but epoxy is not easy to reverse.  I am just going by intuition here (my wife would laugh at that) but I don't think it really matters if the slots are filled or not. 

This weekend I'll be tackling this project on my new to me L-03W and just turning the plastic pins until I can find a set of 3 or 5 degree unslotted boxwood pins.

[cbarclay]

I did this to my L-03W Saturday night and didn't notice a huge difference but i did notice a difference.  Mainly it improved the attach/responsiveness and loudness.  I used the same plastic pins, just turned 90 degrees.  I have some Colosi bone unslotted pins on order that I'll put on later this week.  I'll be interested to see (hear) if that makes any difference.  I don't really care if it doesn't - I think it'll look good with the maple binding.