Pinless bridge and changing strings
 

I love my Emerald X7, but the custom pinless bridge is giving me fits. Unlike a Breedlove pinless bridge where the string goes in one side and out the other and is anchored in, the Emerald bridge sort of wedges the ball end in the opening. However, when changing strings, I find that as I tighten up the string, the ball end pops out. It’s maddening. It takes 3 or more tries for me to get the ball end properly seated. Is anyone else having this issue? What might I be doing wrong?

Try using your free hand to keep tension in the ball end while winding. I typically use my pinky and thumb (one to pull away from the bridge and the other from the tuning peg) on the non winding hand to add the tension before the string is taught enough to hold itself.

Good luck.

I had a Breedlove pinless bridge also prior to this so there was a learning curve.

-B

Sometimes slapping a capo on the string until it is tight enough to stay put works...

Mine was doing this too. I can't help attributing it to bad design. I gave up and made a gizmo to trap them beneath the bridge. It also pulls the coils down so you don't scrap your palm if you palm mute lower on the bridge.

http://shpws.me/R6L4

Yes, the Emerald pinless bridge is a pretty bad design and one of the reasons I ended up selling my custom X7. I used to have to take a jewelers screwdriver and put it in the hold and apply back pressure to hold the ball in place while I tightened which was problematic as I normally use that free hand to apply pressure to the strings at the top to ensure good winds. I also had a bear of a time getting the string ball ends to pop out when removing!

In my opinion Emerald would be wise to redesign their pinless bridge. As an alternative, their nylon bridges with a more classic through-hole from the bottom works every well as a pinless bridge.