Pinless Bridge ?

[Howard Williamson]

So, what's the conventional wisedom re: pinless bridges (Like Ovation uses) ?
A friend of mine plays an Ovation and it seems nice to me. (and after launching a pin across the living room on a re-string I started to think I liked the idea).
Do they use a concealed pin on the back of the bridge, or is it strictly a glue joint ?

[Mark Swanson]

It's strictly a glue joint. I have seen a lot of Ovation bridges come off, too but I blame that on poor assembly and the fact that they glue the bridge to the finish.

[Thomas Dooher]

Not sure if they still do it this way, but the Ovations I worked on back in the day had epoxy as the finish. They used a 'special' (at least that's the smoke and mirrors they had us believe in the late 70's) bondng glue that adhered to the epoxy better than a bare surface. It could have been marketing BS, and usually we just sent them in to be repaired under warranty (they had a good program back then). Mostly, we changed failed tuning machines. Anything else, we were to send out.

[Michael Jennings]

Lowden is what I would consider a pretty top notch maker, and also uses a pin-less back loaded bridge.

Mike J

[Michael Lewis]

Steve Klein developed a nice bridge design, sort of pinless. The strings attached to the outside of the bridge to permanent pins that were anchored through the bridge and into the bridge plate. This design has much less probability of coming off due to string tension, as opposed to the Ovation design.