Bridge pins

[ricklt]

Have posted on a acoustic guitar forum.

Sent from my XT1650 using Tapatalk

[Simon Barden]

The bridge pin holes start out the same diameter as do all the bridge pins (at least if plastic or mass-produced bone or wooden ones). The strings all have the same sized ball-ends and the groove in the bridge pin is large enough to accommodate the wrapped wire of all the strings. So there shouldn't be anything to differentiate between the different pins.

Over a long time, the pins may get chewed up a bit in different ways, depending on the angle the ball-ends end up sitting with respect to the front edge of the bridge hole, but that still shouldn't affect anything if the pins end up re-arranged.

Maybe on fully hand-built guitars, each pin may be turned to a slightly different thickness by the luthier, as they're not using CNC machinery, but even so, the holes will be drilled to the same size so, that if the pins had different diameters, they wouldn't be sitting at an even height.

I've got a 52-year old Gibson acoustic and that came with the original plastic bridge pins. They were pretty chewed-up and the tips had bent over but they still worked fine for holding the strings in place after being put back in a random order. I have since replaced them with some nicer looking ones (though have kept the originals) and they work fine as well.

You could argue that as the stings all have slightly different tensions on then (especially in tunings) that the ball ends and the string itself will wear at the underside and front edge of the hole in different ways. But that still doesn't really affect the way the bridge pin works.

So I am currently very unconvinced that there is any real science behind this, though am always ready to listen to a reasoned argument.

[dingobass]

Yeah, have heard that too Rick.
Personally, I put that theory in the basket of Luthiery hocus pokus bull crap.
Pins are pins, they wear out and need replacing from time to time so that kind of shoots that theory down....
Unless, of course, they are custom made and differ in size......which would be crazy IMHO.