Bridge pins DO change tone
 

lets face it, not everyone's sensitivity to hearing tonal changes is the same. Add to that the fact not every guitar is going to change to the same degree with different pins. But the fact is, they CAN make a very notable difference. Of course they won't change a D18 to a 000-18 or make a great sounding guitar sound like a lam top junker. But I experienced this for the first time yesterday. I've never experimented with pins before for some reason. But i bought some stewmac ivoroid unslotted pins which arrived yesterday. Turns out they are larger in both head size, top diameter and weight. I measured mine and the stewmac specs showed the same measurment, but they weren't. They are heavier and harder and i think that makes a difference.

Anyways, i was afraid to ream the holes because this guitar sounds perfect. I hate to use that word because I know no guitars can, or at least thats always been my belief. But i honestly can say that what i want from a 000-18 style guitar is exactly what this delivers, and as perfect as the sound i hear in my head when i think of what the perfect 000-18 should sound like. Maybe thats why it was so obvious to me, because when something that right changes even a bit, you hear it big time. Anyways, i reamed the E, B and G strings and slotted then. At that point i played it a bit before i did the rest to see if it was sounding any different. As much as i love this guitar's tone, the change horrified me ! No, it wasn't nite and day, but when something sounds perfect then changes just enough to where it no longer does, THAT is horrifying ! I figured i ruined it because of the slotting and reaming. I was heartbroken until i replaced the old pins using the backwards so the slots were opposite of the string to make up for the slotting. The tone was back ! I was relieved Big time. So i left the 3 remaining holes unreamed and played it a while.

Now i'm no beginner when it comes to A/B'ing tonal changes due to mods. I've been doing is forever. So knowing how ears can be fooled and being more familiar with placebo effect than the back of my hand, i decided later that nite to put the 3 pins where i had reamed the holes. The change was definitely very apparent. So they're out and the old pins are staying. Since then i keep listening to hear if theres a difference from having reamed the 3 holes and slotting them, but so far i don't think so. At times i feel there may be, but thankfully if there is it's so subtle that it's negligible, at least so far. Fingers are crossed. I'm bothered some by the fact i have 3 slightly larger and slotted holes now, but thats a lot better than the alternative, the tone i heard with the new pins.

anyways, i broke my #1 rule, a rule that i foolishly ignore now and then even thos i know it well and have screwed myself many times ignoring it..."if it ain't broke, don't fix it" ! may advice to those considering reaming or slotting.....don't. Barring the NEED to do it because of issues wroth the ball end chewing up the plate, leave it. Tone is tricky and one thing i have learned is that the changes often don't reveal themselves to you much when you first make a change. But often going BACK to the old setup makes the change much more apparent. So often you go on with a change to the bad not even realizing it then down the road you start feeling something ain't quite as good as it used to be. Anyways, i do expect the typical internet forum bashing for suggesting i hear something that others are sure can't be heard. But Thats my story and i'm sticking to it. :D

Hey iknowjohnny- I'm glad you were able to tell the difference and improve the tone of you guitar. That's all that matters.

There have been lots of debate on this forum about bridge pins alerting tone. Some agree, others don't. I imagine this will be a 'heated' (i use that term loosely) thread.

I'm sure you're right. But what i wasn't able to improve ther tone, that was th point of the post. It got worse. However, now that you bring it up i suppose i should have mentioned that if pins can change the tone, then it could obviously go the other way too. But rather then do an irreversible change like i did i would suggest just new pins. Had i not reamed and slotted E, B and G I'd have endured a lot less worry, just the loss of $14 which i don't care about.

I'm dubious of anything above the nut or behind the saddle having any great effect, but anything is possible. What I wonder about this. When you change out something like bridge pins, you would likely also be changing to new strings, so wouldn't that play into it?

Not if he first changed all six pins and then went back hours later and switched three back to stock again. ;) At least the OP was willing to put what he heard to the test. I did much the same thing when I made my first bone saddle and felt the tone of my guitar improved dramatically: I left the strings on but but the old saddle back on again. Yep: didn't sound as good as it did with bone saddle. So I put the bone saddle back on. Got real good again! :)

I think switching from plastic pins to bone pins does make a very small improvement in tone if the new pins have a very good fit. Perhaps, since the OP isn't impressed, he has less than a perfect fit?

That's pretty much my thought.... Are there folks who are capable of recalling EXACTLY what the instrument sounded like when the last set of new strings were installed, and then capable of aurally making an exact comparison of this remembered tone with the newly-installed strings and bridge pins?

I have no pretensions in this regard. Frankly, I have pretty poor hearing. I'm 65, have hearing loss from shooting in one ear, and tinnitus to boot. I'm no judge.
Just from the physics of the thing, it would seem that unless there were a substantial change in mass in the bridge pins, to the extent that it would contribute to a change in the entire vibrating mass of the top of the guitar, there could be no effect.
So, go from plastic to say...Brass. Sure. You might get a couple of percentage points more mass. But plastic to....Bone? I don't have a guitar top structure lying around, nor a precision scientific scale. But I would wager that the difference in total mass would be near-undetectable.

Same strings....i've been around the old modding block far too many times to make that mistake. I would never change more than 1 thing at once or you invalidate any findings. You can't possibly be sure which caused any change you hear. When i hear of people doing that it always surprises me they don't see this.

Darn. I have a Lowden. No pins. What can I do to improve the tone?

Try different materials for the ball end on the string.

Trade it for a Martin or Taylor? :D Just kidding - I've owned and played some great Lowdens that needed no improvements to the tone. ;)

Well, tho you're being sarcastic, let me answer anyways. I did NOT change pins to get better tone. The stocks are cheap plastic that look cheezy and one even is a different pin than the others. (don't ask me how that happened on a new guitar) and i just wanted a better looking and quality pin. Thats all. I reamed and slotted them because I bought unslotted pins on recommendation here because it was said the proper way for a bridge to be is slotted with unslotted pins. Otherwise i'd have just bought new and nicer pins and left it at that. My post here about tone was done because of the difference i heard, not because i was LOOKING for a difference in tone.

Guess that did sound sarcastic, so let me respond.

I've put ebony pins on a 514ce in an attempt to warm it up a bit, and I think it worked.

I've put buffalo horn pins on a D-18V because the plastic pins were wearing out, and I think it made the sound "bigger" and warmer.

So I'm not a skeptic. But at the same time I don't fully trust my ears or my expectations. Glad your mods worked.

But it just struck me that you can't try these mods with a Lowden.

LOL!! You guys must not be reading my posts because you're the second one that said you're glad it worked for me ! Point was, it DIDN'T work for me. Messed the tone up in fact. But the point is a change be it good or bad. Mine happened to be bad.

I am curious
 

So how can you really tell if the tone changed or if there was a noticable difference from before, so many things change and effect the guitars sounds that I always wonder,not saying that you can't hear a difference but how on earth do you go about proving that you did find a difference. As was said before is it the pins that made the change noticable to you or was it that the new pins seated better causing more effect on the top that was the coulprit?
Me I am always going to be one of those thats says nay to getting any difference from pins, but hey thats just me.Ship

Well, thats just the nature of internet forums. You don't know me so you have no idea how to read what i'm saying. If you knew me well and respected my opinions from your experiences with m about subject matter like this then you wouldn't question it. But you don't and therefore you have no reason to believe what i'm saying over your own opinions about it. So no, I( don't have proof and i didn't post this expecting to convince anyone as much as just see what others think and maybe make others think about it. It's always interesting to discuss things that interest you, and really isn't that all we're doing here more than trying to convince anyone?

That said, what it seemed to change was the strings seemed bigger or thicker sounding but less dynamic and with less complex overtones. In fact, what it sounded more like to me is the way my Larrivee OM-09 sounded, which from a technical standpoint was almost perfect but totally lacked any soul or woodiness, or organic-ness may be a good way to put it. The attack that is a big part of the tone may be what changed the most. But that said i am not saying it changed radically in those ways, just to a slight degree. But even a very slight change was enough to horrify me because the thing sounded so perfect before that. Tiny changes can be devastating when it happens to a guitar that is perfection to you before.

and yes, like you suggested i have no idea exactly what about the new pins caused it....the seating or the new pins themselves or what. I suspect the pins themselves only because the old pins brought the tone back, yet they were now seated differently since i reamed the holes and the pins were seated backwards because the slots were no longer needed after slotting the bridge.

Sorry to hear your modifications and pin changes didn't work out for you.

Maybe you already stated this, but did you use the same old strings? Which raises the question, when you do change strings, how much of a difference tonally do you hear? For me, it takes about two weeks for new strings to mature to the point where I like the sound.

Every luthier and tech I've spoken to supports the idea that a slotted bridge system used with unslotted pins is the best configuration to produce a tight, unified bond between top, saddle, bridge, and plate - but I know you know this.

I guess being as sensitivity as you are to the effects that tiny changes can make to your guitar's tone is both a blessing and a curse, sort of like people who have perfect pitch: they can appreciate good pitch better than most, but suffer every little imperfection when a note is not perfectly centered. I still have trouble differentiating the sound of guitars that others think is obvious, so I'm immune to the finer degrees of tone.

I'll say one thing for you, you did your homework, knew what you were facing, and understood from the beginning that there was a risk involved. You did nothing wrong, I just wish the result had flipped the other way.

I think that your observation quoted above is very apropos for all of us: if your guitar sounds perfect, don't mess with it: there is no way to predict the effect any modification - big or small - will have, even if the theory is sound.

Okay - so now can you think of ways to perhaps reverse the outcome, bring it back to perfection?

Good luck and keep after it, I admire your persistence!

Thats it alright. But have no doubt.....I WILL do something this stupid again ! I can't count the times I've told my self don't do it, it can only get worse not better. Then i go and do it anyways ! Any yes, i mentioned in one of my posts i used the same strings after someone else asked the same thing you did.

And by the way, when you mentioned that you don't hear the finer details, you may not notice them right away like i usually do. But That doesn't mean you wouldn't hear it eventually. For example, If you owned this same guitar and someone did this mod to it, you may not notice it immediately. But i believe in time you would. You might not then realize it was that change which caused it and you may not even be sure you are hearing a difference. You may just feel something isn't quite like it used to be.

Guitars and ears do differ, but for me, I capoed my guitar and loosened the strings and replaced my original plastic pins on one of my guitars and replaced them with a set called Tusc pins (different density plastic) and found the sound to be very brittle afterwards and quickly put the original pins back in. I did not change the strings while changing the pins.. To my ears, Tusq pins seemed to change the tone a significant amount in a bad way. Most of my guitars have Ebony pins, but on this guitar I wanted light colored pins. I am going to try boxwood pins later this week.

it did work for you,if you started with the new pins and swapped for the old then your post would be "yeah pins do improve the sound" you just missed out the steps inbetween.

Well, thats what i said in the quote....it's a change be it good or bad and it could go either way. But for me it went the wrong way because i didn't start with the ivoroid pins. The point of the thread tho as it is titled is pins do change tone. Tho i supposed a more accurate title would have been "can" instead of "do".

Yep.
Psychoacoustics.

Better yet, "Some people may think they hear a change whether of not it ocured. Or may not even it it has."

In these days of fossilized mammoth ivory, walrus ivory, bone, etc. I always remind myself that the material used by Martin on all those 50 + year old "vintage" guitars folks rave about and spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on was......synthetic. Best way to match that today would be with plastic bridge pins.

Another victim of modern culture.
The pursuit of bigger, shinier, faster, louder. MORE must be better.
Well, sometimes "better" is the enemy of good.

As the decades have rolled by, the saying "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" has become my mantra.

If only we fiddled and fine-tuned our personality as diligently as we attack the tone of our instruments . . . . . . .

I think you are getting yourself mixed up,ofc the wrong pins will have a bad effect on a guitar,the right pins won't,no one has said any pin will improve the sound but only some,a match betwwen the pins and guitar,thats why it did work,the contention has never been a swap is all that is needed to improve tone but a swap to a pin that makes the improvement that is wanted,you carried out a test to prove a point,so it did work for you,you now know that the "right" pins do change the tone for the better.

After owning 28 Martins from standards up to uber high enders I have found the stock setups work best 99% of the time..........;)

May i make an observation here? Some of you are accusing me of exactly what YOU are doing. You are accusing me of hearing something i didn't hear. You are also hearing things that aren't there. You really should read my posts before responding.

May i suggest that if you enjoy accusing people of something that gets on your last nerve, find someone who actually said what you are accusing me of and post in thier thread. I not only never said i was replacing the pins to improve my tone, i actually said i believe several times that i was DOING IT TO GET RID OF THE CHEEZY QUALITY PINS.

I'd stick around but i don't think i fit in with people like some of you.....thankfully.

I wouldn't some criticism bother you. Plenty of people share the idea that pins make a difference.

I'd be interested in knowing whether there was a difference in mass between the new and old pins. I've been able to objectively measure changes in the output of a guitar from alterations of as little as a couple of grams at the bridge, and that's much less than the difference in weight between, say, plastic and bone pins.

The thing to keep in mind with this is that by altering the mass at the bridge you're changing a couple of things that can change the sound; the resonant frequencies of one or more top modes ('tap tones') and also the relative 'impedance' of the strings and bridge. Even small changes in these things can noticably change the tone of an instrument. This will be particularly true if, for example, one of the top resonant modes is close in pitch to, say, a back mode, such that the degree or nature of 'coupling' between the two is altered. There are 'threshold effects' in play: if you're strapped in a chair and there is water coming in, it might not matter too much until the level reaches your nostrils, and then it matters a lot.

The upshot is that most of the time small changes don't make much difference, but sometimes they can. It's good to be skeptical but also good to keep in mind that there's a lot of variation in these things, and just because you don't hear it on your guitar it doesn't mean somebody else won't hear it on their's.

I kind of thought so to, until I tried it myself. I switched my Larrivee P-03 (Mahogany) from the stock pins to Snakewood from StewMac. It is a mixed bag of tricks. I don't like the sound for the E, and B strings with the new pins, BUT . . . the G, D, A, and low E string sound fantastic. It tone of the D, A, and E is now very much like the sound of Willie Nelson's guitar. I love it. I don't want to mix the pins, I think it would look stupid.

The sound of the lower strings sounds so great I am willing to forego a bit on the E and B. This is also encouraging me to play a lot more lower notes on the guitar.

I wouldn't expect it to make much difference but I guess it is effecting the vibration of the string, bridge and top enough to make a difference.

Cheers.
GS