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Old 11-14-2012, 05:14 PM
Russ C Russ C is offline
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Join Date: Feb 2012
Location: Melbourne, Australia
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I experimented with this the last time this thread came up and found (against my predictions) that under tension the ball end always rotated into the pin slot and therefore had less contact with the bridge plate - causing more "erosion".
(It's worth cautioning that bridge slots had better be a neat fit or erosion could easily be worse).
Unless your pins are made of soft plastic I can't really imagine how any difference would be audible, but ....

One other experiment I did was to put 6 carefully made holes in a very hard, reinforced but almost weightless old Ovation bridge shim that I had. That now sits between my unslotted bridge plate and the ball ends - no change or harm to the guitar. It can stay there if I don't take all the strings off at once. I can't even imagine a difference in what I hear .. arguments could go either way though - an extra thing in there vs. a more solid seat for the ball end. Maybe the bone pins have a role here.
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