Convert floating bridge to pin bridge

[John McDonald]

I have a 50's birch silvertone that i'd like to convert from a floating bridge to a pin bridge. The reason I want to convert it is because I believe a pin bridge will produce a better sound ( less biting and more full).  The guitar is ladder braced and has a thin, flat 1 3/4" spruce brace right in the place where a bridge plate would go. At first I was thinking of making a thin maple bridge plate the same width as the flat brace and gluing it to the brace. Was figuring this would help prevent the string balls from tearing up the soft spruce brace. Now I'm thinking that having a pin bridge on top of this flat lateral brace is not going to drive the top of the guitar very well. I've taken a couple of pics of the top of the guitar with the original set up and the set up I was hoping to do. Any advice or ideas would be greatly appreciated.

[harrison phipps]

I have converted several vintage Harmony & Kay guitars that had floating or pinless bridges to a pin bridge and found that the I liked the sound better.  Often the neck needs to be reset but on the better ones, I remove the back to X brace the top and then set the neck at the correct angle when gluing the headblock to the back.   You can see pics of some at frettedstrings.com click on Shop.

I have not had gotten as good a sound from ones with birch tops so I limit these time consuming rebuilds to guitars with solid spruce tops & solid mahogany back & sides. Good luck!

 

[John McDonald]

Enjoyed your website Harrison. I have a couple of 50's/60's Harmony and Kays with spruce tops  that I'm holding off on restoring until i have more experience. One is a Kamico that is already x braced  and the other is a big silvertone jumbo with ladder bracing. It great to see what can be done with these. Thanks.

[Magnus Hultin]

Harrison,

I may misread You with what You mean by "pinless bridge" but If You referr to a glued bridge of "stringtrough" or "spannish" style, I fail to see how conversion to pin bridge per se would do have any impact on the sound. That is if all other factors (bridge weight, stringheight over top, break angle) are equal, which they of course rarely are.

 

On the matter of conversion from floating bridge (with strings attached to a tailpiece) to a glued bridge (pinbridge or spannish bridge),  as have been mentioned this most often includes (or should include) modification of the bracing system. Not only for stability reasons, but I think also because these differrent designs goes along with differrent principles on how the top produces sound.

 

[Pierre-Antoine Roiron]

I would be afraid that the ladder brace would not stand the big torque a pin bridge involves. Harrison sure had that in mind when he rebraced those guitars.

[John McDonald]

And here I am worrying about tone when I should have considered the real issue of the top ripping off. So it sounds like my only options are to either pull the back off and rebrace it (which actually sounds like a really fun and educational project to me), or just set it back up with its floating bridge. I really appreciate your warning.

[Greg Mirken]

John, and others, I know I'm becoming a curmudgeon ("old fart", if you prefer) but can we please not refer to rebracing or converting an old guitar from floating bridge to pin bridge setup as "restoring"? When I started working on fretted instruments in the 70s I saw many original old 5-string banjos that had been 'improved' by cutting off the headstock and splicing in an extra 3 frets (just like Pete!). Those wonderful original necks were ruined forever. Luckily in the more enlightened current view a replacement neck would be built and the original saved with the instrument. I may own a lot of instruments, but I think of myself more as their current caretaker. I'm not the first owner of many of them, and I surely won't be the last. I feel I owe it to them and whoever has them after me not to screw them up.

[harrison phipps]

My bad, I did indeed use the wrong term, I am new to this forum & will be more careful.  What I do with the old Harmony & Kay's is certainly not restoration but modification, and major at that. I too feel that I and other instrument owners are caretakers and should act accordingly and protect the instrument for its next owner(s) and for posterity.  I get these instruments from Graig's List and from eBay under "project guitars" and they are all in very bad condition, bad neck angle, cracks all around, usually no bridge or tuners, warped necks with damaged frets.  In some cases I get these guitars from the dumpster at the local thrift store. When I am done, they are stable, have correct neck angles, resurfaced fingerboards, new frets and a new bridge that matches the wood of the fingerboard, usually Brazilian. They sound great and play easy with correct intonation, I would not call this screwing them up. Perhaps 100 years from now someone will restore the instrument to its original ladder bracing.

[Greg Mirken]

I would not call this screwing them up.

Nor would I. Sounds like you have the right attitude.

[Kerry Krishna]

Harrison I went to the link, clicked on shop and saw about 20 (?) guitars there. It does not say on any of them that they were archtop guitars, so I am wondering if all that you did WAS the flat tops?  I have a 30s Kay Kraft Two Point tenor archtop that I am going to be doing this work to soon, and if anyone here HAS done an actual archtop, please let me know. I will be redoing the bracing and the endblock too... .. Thanks!

[harrison phipps]

[harrison phipps]

Here is another one that I "screwed up".  A Kay N-1 archtop.  There was nothing too structurally wrong - missing hardware and some binding.  The peghead was warped so I added a Brazilian overlay & inlaid the torch.  The neck was warped & no truss rod so I sanded the warp out by resurfacing its Brazilian fingerboard & added new frets.  The pickguard & pup combination was off a Tempo (it looks MIJ).  Grover StaTite tuners, a vintage nickel tailpiece, an ebony bridge and a set of flat wound jazz strings.

[John McDonald]

Hi Greg. I totally respect your sensitivity to frankensteining instruments. I've learned a lot from reading your comments on this forum over the last year plus. Just to clarify, the two spruce top guitars I mentioned that I plan to "restore" will most likely be restoration projects with no modifications. That said, I also really respect what Harrison is doing with these old guitars. Like Harrison, my project guitars are all in really bad, unplayable shape. Horrible neck angles,  big humps where neck meets body, open cracks in various places all over the body, old chipped up fingerboards that have been subjected to really hacked fretjobs, etc,etc...I picked these things up from places like craigslist and ebay to get my feet wet with proper repair techniques and also because I really want to make these guitars playable again and get them back into the hands of musicians. One well meaning young guy in the guitar building class that I attend once a week with this project guitar, looked over my shoulder at this silvertone and advised that I let this one go to the landfill. Can you imagine any better motivation to make this old girl look and sound great again!