Any advantage to this at all?

[Dave Bagwill]

Here's a top view - I see no reason for pin holes at all, if a 3/16" access hole is provided, and a .060" slot is run parallel to the saddle, and the short angled slots from there.
I don't know - I'm just fooling around here but I'm going to make a prototype and see what's what. Let me know if you see obvious difficulties please.

[John Parchem]

I really have no idea but thinking through the entire mechanical model and purely speculating I would be worried that the long horizontal cut all of the way through the bridge and top would really undermine the structural integrity of the top and the bridge in an area that takes a lot of force. May be the bridge is thick enough to handle what would be a leveraged force right next to the slot. What is lost is the vertical structure from your string slot to the bottom of the bridge continuing down to the tail.

With a pinned bridge one is using a fairly tight joint (the wedged pin) to restore even the little bit of structure lost when drilling the hole.

[Dave Bagwill]

Otoh, eliminating pins eliminates weight, so maybe there is a trade off.

Even with regular pin holes there is a concern about splitting the bridge along the grain, which is a good reason for not having the pin holes in a straight line along the grain - so my string slot would have to be at least slightly slanted.

Thanks for your thoughts John, that's what I like - problems asked and resolved one way or another before I put a lot of work into it.

[John Parchem]

To your point about splitting the bridge aren't you doing that by design in your picture. It is already spit across most of its length.

[Herman]

if you cut the bridge through almost it full length, you loose the bearing lower part of the bridge. 1/2 an inch of the bridge is no longer a structural part of it. Hmm don't know if thats a good thing. Why not turning to an ovation solution?

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/c ... bridge.jpg

[Dave Bagwill]

The Ovation solution is a hassle for set-ups, otherwise it works just fine.

To the point about splitting the bridge - I don't honestly know. You may be right. In effect, though, the six holes we drill plus the countersink for the pins and the taper - that effectively splits the bridge also, I think, and in total maybe weakens the integrity at least as much as my slot would?

[Dave Bagwill]

Just ran across this. Beneteau guitar. Now that's a clean look, don't know yet how he did it. Also does not look like much break angle, but it may just be the pic.
This guitar was made for Don Ross. From Beneteau's website:
On Don’s original, he requested a bridge which loaded the strings from the back as opposed to using bridge pins. If a string broke while on stage, he could change it quickly and easily. The design worked well and I now offer it as an option.