Does anyone know the history of Bridge Pins and who first used them?

[ac2300]

I cannot find any good info on this subject, anybody know? Thanks AC

[Wade Hampton]

They were definitely in common use by the last two decades of the 19th Century. Contrary to popular belief, bridge pins were originally used with gut strings: the player would tie a knot in the end of the gut string and hold each one in place with a bridge pin.

Ball end steel strings were a later adaptation that took advantage of the widely used pinned bridge construction on guitars. Prior to that steel strings normally had a loop at one end, as mandolin and banjo strings still have.


Wade Hampton Miller

They were always typical on Martin guitars, which puts them as far back as the early 19th century, and I believe I've seen examples of them on earlier 18th century guitars.

[ac2300]

Who started making the Ball end?

[ac2300]

Also, i could only find pics of trapeze style bridges on Mandolins, using the loop on the string to grab the notch, but i havent seen any Pin style bridges on on them. How can you use the loop end with Pins?

[ocarolan]

Originally Posted by ac2300

Also, i could only find pics of trapeze style bridges on Mandolins, using the loop on the string to grab the notch, but i havent seen any Pin style bridges on on them. How can you use the loop end with Pins?

It's usually simple enough to insert a ball (from an old string) into the loop to allow loop ended strings to be used with pinned bridges if the right strings are not to hand.

Buchanan madolins etc have pinned bridges,
http://www.folkmandolin.co.uk/

and Fylde's Octavius bouzouki has a pinned bridge.
http://www.fyldeguitars.com/obouzouki.html


Keith

[Alan Carruth]

Bridge pins were used on harps back in the Middle Ages. Early Irish and Scots harps had removable backs, so you could change the strings easily by threading them up through a hole in the sound board and tying a knot (and stow your lunch and a pair of gloves in the box, too). The small 'Gothic' harps that came into use roughly after the First Crusade were built differently and the backs were not removable, so they used pins instead. The pins were sometimes (usually?) shaped like flags, so that the upper part of the pin touched the next string down, and it was shaped to produce the sort of buzz you hear on a sitar. They were thus called 'bray pins'. This probably helped these small low-tension instruments to 'cut' a bit, although that sort of sound was pretty popular at the time, apparently.

The 'tie' bridge used on Spanish style Classical guitars is a modification of the bridge that was common on lutes; just cut off the front part with the saddle in it, and most of the wings, and you've got the earlier bridge. These didn't have much gluing surface, so they may well have been pretty unreliable. On of my students teaches lute, and he keeps coming in with student instruments that have the bridges off. Anyway, pinning the strings down probably seemed like a good idea, and was fairly common except in Spain, where they stuck with the older system.