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Im quite taken by the guitars of Etienne Laprevotte, see a sample here http://www.earlyguitar.com/main/page_fr ... _1835.html

The bridge on this guitar has pins. I assume the original used gut strings and that they are knotted so they can be held by the pins. Of course this is the only example of this kind of bridge I have found in my limited reading. Everybody else seems to use tied bridges. There must be a good reason. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Thx

Sebastiaan

Gut strings were pretty much universal for guitars before the 20th century. The method of attaching them varied a lot though. Lute-like tie bridges seem to predominate during the 17th and 18th centuries but by the beginning of the 19th,
The pin bridge came into widespread use.
Part of this may be due to the introduction of the separate saddle piece at this time. Guitars of the 1830s by Panormo, Stauffer and Martin all used the pin bridge.
Spanish guitars however continued to use the saddleless tie bridge during this period (even Torres used several on his earliest guitars) and some even adopted (Jose' Recio for one) a pin bridge design. Torres is usually given credit for combining the separate saddle and tied bridge into the modern classical design still used today.
Even Martin as well as makers Schmidt and Maul adopted the tie bridge design in the 1840's when they emulated the Spanish guitars of that period but all soon after went with the now familar pyramid pin bridge design now so familiar.

Why the back and forth?
Style perhaps, but more likely I think is the bracing designs that were being used at the time.
Simple transverse braces as those found on the Stauffer and Martins of the 1830s have a small bridge patch and a single angled transverse brace in the lower bout. Very simple to make a pin bridge design and to install it without problem.
In contrast, Spanish design guitars often had 3-5 fan braces which ran through the area the bridge so that any pin holes had to be drilled very carefully to avoid them. Failure to straddle the center brace and miss the outboard ones when drilling pin holes would damage the top. These guitars most often used a tie bridge for that reason which is very time consuming to make.
I think the "X" brace evolution seen both in this country and in Europe was an effort to simplify the internal "fan" brace structure and to open up a space which would easily accomodate the holes needed for the simpler and cheaper to make pin bridge.

David, that's helpful.
Thanks for the illumination!

Steve

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One practical problem with putting a pin bridge on a classical guitar is that it is so strongly associated with steel strings, at least in this country. I remember the fellow who brought in an 1844 Panormo guitar for repair because the steel strings he was putting on it chipped the saddle part of the ebony bridge. Lucky thing; if he'd gotten those strings up to tension they'd have ripped the top right off. He didn't know better; he just assumed that pin bridge = steel strings. I suppose if you're making the guitar you could note the string type on the lable, but it's amazing how many people don't believe what they read when they really should.

You know the old saying, "Some people couldn't pour p--- out of a boot, with the directions written on the heel!"

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Waddy

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Sound Clips of most of my guitars

As David implied it's thought that the main reason that pinned bridges went out of favour with classical builders was the move to a greater number , 5 or 7, of fan braces that would be almost imposible to miss when drilling for a pinned top. The fact that the lute style bridge with the later addition of the saddle worked so well meant that in a purely Darwinian sense there was no need to change due to lack of fitness.

I've restored a number of guitars that date back into the 18th century that had pinned bridges. This one is a London made guitar from 1780 that uses pins, an ivory bead was held onto the end of the string with a knot and ivory pins used, much as we do today on steel strings. Once I had worked my magic on this guitar, it proved itself to be one of the sweetest sounding guitars I've ever played (I think probably due to the 200+ year old spruce top rather than any skill on my behalf!)

By the way note the angled ladder brace, half a kind of proto-X, many more X-like examples can be found on early guitars, it's inaccurate to say that Martin 'invented' the X or even Torres the fan brace, they just developed pre-existing trends.

Colin

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I don't believe in anything, I simply make use of a set of reasonable working hypotheses.

Many thanks for the responses guys,

The bracing evolution makes sense to me, it means that ladder bracing is the way to go with these instruments. I know that Laprevotte used two longitudinal braces, does anyone have opinions about the desirability of ladder vs longitudinal bracing? I really take your point of 200 years of use on the spruce as well Colin, would this be a larger factor in your opinion?

You can tell where Im going with this Im sure... Ive just got to have/make one.

I found it very interesting to read David's comments on the impact of the bracing pattern on the application of the tie block bridge. I'm dealing with exactly those circumstances on a Panormo style guitar that I'm building right now.

Panormo used a pin bridge. I've had to carefully plan out where the pins and the braces would be located. Its a pretty tight fit. I hope that all goes as planned. Makes me wish that I could use a tie block, well, I could, but I want it to be fairly authentic.

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