Bridge Pin Spacing ?

[George Roberts]

I am making a replacement bridge for a Bay State parlor guitar.  I don't have an original Bay State bridge to copy, so I was using an old original Martin pyramid bridge to get the spacing and location of the bridge pin holes.  It turns out that the holes are incrementally farther apart, going from treble to bass.  The 5th and 6th string holes are almost 0.050 farther apart than the 1st and 2nd strings.  From treble to bass, each set of holes is just slightly farther apart.

I am aware of the string spacing at the nut, taking into account the width of the strings, but had not considered it a concern at the bridge.  Have I been missing something?

Thanks as always for your help and insight, George

[Mike Kolb]

Curious myself, so went looking and and found this discussion at the UMGF... https://umgf.com/bridge-string-spacing-question-t86394.html

Personally, I side with the opinion that Charlie Longstreth arrived-at in that discussion.  He likes the incremental spacing for the nut slots but even spacing at the bridge holes. 

[George Roberts]

Thanks Mike,

I found that discussion very interesting.  It is nice to know that my measurements weren't off, and that the changes between strings was probably deliberate.  On the other hand, I think I will go with the equal spacing.

[Walter W Wright]

i've been torn on this but i'm coming around to the idea that equal center-to-center spacing for both nut and bridge is the way to go. i think looks are less important than playability and our fingers approach the strings towards the centers, not the edges

in reality it's probably irrelevant, as in the difference is hard to see or feel, and things like the graduating stewmac spacing rule are useful more for quickly getting a good usable spacing at a given distance than for creating a special edge-to-edge equalized string spread. after all it doesn't account for the typical size jump between the last plain string and the first wound string, nobody seems to care about that