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Old 05-13-2019, 09:35 AM
packocrayons packocrayons is offline
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Join Date: Jan 2017
Posts: 146
Default Teminating strings in the end block

I was thinking about this today and I think it might result in some interesting discussion. The thought is that the saddle has holes drilled to guide the strings, but the strings pass through to the end block, where they're either fed through stratocaster-style or somehow pinned.

Advantages:
- Lower tension on bridge, no chance of lifting/top warping
- Sufficient break angle as compared to a tailpiece
- Chances to do some cool woodworking around the end graft

Disadvantages:
- String changes are hard (feed through end block, up through bridge)
- String length may become an issue
- Open strings in the body cavity.

The open strings thing may actually be an advantage, if some clever engineering resulted in the strings ending up as an octave (or fourth) factor of the scale length. There may be some interesting overtones.

Thoughts? I think it might be a cool thing to try on a uke build or something first.
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Old 05-13-2019, 10:57 AM
Alan Carruth Alan Carruth is offline
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Lots of folks have done this, pretty much for the reasons you cite. And it's not very popular, also for reasons you cite.

If you run the strings over a saddle and then down through guide holes to get the needed break angle you'll end up with about the same torque on the bridge as it had with the strings attached. What you remove is the shearing force in the glue line between the bridge and the top. The top still needs to be pretty much as stiff to resist the torque, but the bridge is less likely to pull off. Getting enough break angle without some sort of guide is hard, and you tend to end up doing things that cancel out much of the advantage.

A tailpiece has to hinge fairly low to get the required break. You can do this (believe it or not) using an 'L' shaped tailpiece, with the short arm pivoting on the tailblock. The line of the strings over the saddle will extend through the top to the pivot point, but you just 'head them off at the pass' so to speak by attaching them to the tailpiece before they hit the top. This puts a lot of stress on the tailpiece, and also a lot of down bearing force on the top. The top will need to be braced up well, or 'cranked', like a mandolin or Macafferi guitar, or arched, if it's to hold up for very long.

The bottom line is that this is not a new idea. In fact, it has been pretty thoroughly explored for several centuries. Most of us have seen, or tried, something along these lines a few times, and end up sticking with 'the usual'.
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