Be sure the string is inside the slot in the bridge pin. Once you are sure the bead is right up against the inside of the top or bridge plate, then push the pin all the way in while maintaining tension on the string to keep the pin from pushing the bead away from the edge of the hole. Try pulling the string tight before fully inserting the bridge pin. Of course the bridge pin should take up the slack - so the bead won't fit through the hole but it needs to be right up against the hole as far as it can go. You must be sure that you pull the string up so that the bead is tight against the top (soundboard) of the instrument (yours may have a bridge plate under the bridge) - as if you were trying to pull it through the hole. If this happens, it will not be locked in place and the affected string will continually go flat. The potential problem you can run into with the bead (which is less likely to happen with the knot only installation) is that it can get hung on on the end of the pin itself before it seats properly against the inside of the ukulele's top (or bridge plate inside the body) at the edge of the hole. This makes the ukulele string more like a ball end guitar string. Option Two: Some folks elect to tie a small bead onto the end of the string instead of relying on a knot alone. If you use this approach, use a pair of pliers to hold the short end of the string while you pull it as tight as you can so the knot won't slip. Option one is to tie a proper knot in the end of the string that is big enough to not slip and to hold the end of the string against the hole through the bridge once the pin is installed. Since ukulele strings don't come with ball ends you have two options when installing strings on a uke with a pin set bridge.
Note that the bead (labeled string end in picture) is not in the hole with the pin but at the edge of the hole and prevented from entering the hole by the pin. Here is a picture from that may help you visualize this. The slot in the bridge pin is there only so the string (not the bead) can fit into the same hole with the bridge pin. That is what it is supposed to do - seat at the bottom edge of the hole. It couldn't - it seemed to hang up on the bottom edge of the hole. I tried seeing if it actually was small enough to even fit into space between the side of the hole and the side of the pin. You must have a vintage Martin 1T because the newer ones have a tie bar bridge and don't use bridge pins at all. It couldn't - it seemed to hang up on the bottom edge of the hole.Īm I correct in the basic physics of how bridge pins secure a string - through a wedging action? Does it seem as if the pin should taper inward while the hole should taper outward, for best wedging to occur? Are there things I or a luthier could do in terms of reshaping the hole or using different kind of pin? After I removed the string from the tuning peg, I tried seeing if it actually was small enough to even fit into space between the side of the hole and the side of the pin. The second thing that looked wrong was that the person who installed the string fed it through a tiny plastic "bushing"-like thing - rather like a bead - and tied several knots to secure it. I would have thought an outward flare, opposite an inward-flaring bridge pin, would give the best sort of narrowing space for a knot to wedge firmly into. The first thing that struck me as weird was that the hole in the bridge did not flare outward from top to bottom - rather, it's cylindrical or even flares inward slightly from top to bottom. This should both prevent the string from being pulled further upward, and - by exerting sideways pressure against the pin - keep the pin from being pulled up and out of the hole. It's my guess that what should happen is that the knot at the end of the string should be small enough to fit between the bottom edge of the hole and the space provided by the slot in the pin, yet large enough so that, as it is tugged upward by tension into the narrowing space between hole and pin, it wedges firmly at some point in the hole. I'd describe the hole as cylindrical - maybe even slightly wider at the top than at the bottom. The hole has a notch, the width of a string, cut into the wall, on the side of the hole nearest the nut of the uke. It goes into a hole drilled through the bridge and through the top of the uke. The pin has a slight taper, with a slot cut into its side. I don't know of a way to add pictures here. I apologize for using made-up terms for things I don't know the names for. After an ultimately unsuccessful and frustrating attempt at getting a newly-installed C string on a Martin 1T tenor uke to settle in, I've been taking a closer look at what the bridge and the bridge pins look like and how they work.