Quote:
Originally Posted by Alan Carruth
A few people have used a bridge that works more or less like a classical guitar 'tieblock' bridge, or like the Ovation pinless bridge, to get the break angle, and tied the strings to a tailpiece. The objective is to take the tension load off the top allowing it to be more lightly made, with the hope that it will sound better. The old Stella guitars used this setup to convert a 6-string to a 12, more or less so far as I can tell, and I've been told that they didn't even beef up the bracing.
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I can't recall seeing old Stella 12 strings using this scheme of routing the strings through a "tieblock" of sorts. The ones I've seen, both 20s-30s models, and Harmony era ones from the 60s, had the strings passing over the saddle only, with a fairly shallow break angle. Not through any tie block holes, as the bridges didn't have them. On the Harmony era one specifically, the bridge was held in place by string tension, not glued on, and could be easily repositioned if desired. They all used ladder bracing.
However, I do think the pinless bridge/separate tailpiece idea is still well worth exploring. It does typically exist on various guitar-like folk instruments from Latin America and Spain, such as the Cuban
tres, the Puerto Rican
cuatro, and the Spanish
bandurria. Not sure how these are braced.
I have modified some cheapie guitars with a pinless/tieblock bridge to use a separate tailpiece, and it seems to be pretty satisfactory for mitigating a deforming top/separating bridge problem. There's still significant torsional vibrations imparted on the soundboard, but much of the force normally pulling on the soundboard is relieved by the tailpiece. Being unable to A/B compare before and after, I'd not be able to say there's a very noticeable change in tone. The ones I've done used both X-bracing and classical-style fan bracing.