Bridge Pin Reamer

I am going to convert my Ibanez PFT2 tenor guitar to an octave mandolin. So I need to add 4 more strings. Seems the bridge pins are either 3 or 5 degrees. It is pretty difficult to measure accurately this angle within 1 degree tolerance that would be required to determine which reamer I would need. Any help would be appreciated.

if I am understanding your question, you want to know the bridge pin taper of your tenor guitar. a quick method would be if you have a Gibson guitar around, try fit one of the pins, typically Gibson pins are 3 degree taper. Likewise, a modern Martin(and Collings I believe) bridge pin typically would be 5 degree taper.

or

call/email Bob Colosi with the necessary dimensions of your existing bridge pins and he can tell you the taper quickly. follow this link and scroll way down and you will see the info that is needed, its near the bottom.
http://www.guitarsaddles.com/products.asp

Buy the new bridge pins and reamer from the same supplier.

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Originally Posted by grandcanyonminstrel

Buy the new bridge pins and reamer from the same supplier.

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Amen.

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Originally Posted by darylcrisp

if I am understanding your question, you want to know the bridge pin taper of your tenor guitar. a quick method would be if you have a Gibson guitar around, try fit one of the pins, typically Gibson pins are 3 degree taper. Likewise, a modern Martin(and Collings I believe) bridge pin typically would be 5 degree taper.

or

call/email Bob Colosi with the necessary dimensions of your existing bridge pins and he can tell you the taper quickly. follow this link and scroll way down and you will see the info that is needed, its near the bottom.
http://www.guitarsaddles.com/products.asp

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I was hoping there was an industry standard. Looking through the page you quoted, they seems to be fitted per instrument. I will have to dig out my old trig book.


Thanks

Just fit them one at a time. A word of caution, go slow with the reamer -- it is easy to cut too much.....

Things just got weird. I pulled one of the pins from the Ibanez to measure and found the pins are 5mm top to bottom. No taper. What the heck is going on?

How about start over? Get 8 new matching pins, drill the needed holes, ream, if necessary.........taper/no taper is not really important at this stage of your "guitar building" IMHO........you just want it to work and match the others.

We are get close to "overthinking" at this point.

Sometimes I will leave a project for a day or so and things will make more sense when I come back to it......

If the holes have no taper you just got handed an easy way to seal the holes and redrill.

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Originally Posted by neilca

Things just got weird. I pulled one of the pins from the Ibanez to measure and found the pins are 5mm top to bottom. No taper. What the heck is going on?

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Welcome to the world of working on cheap Chinese instruments where nothing follows traditional rules....

Back in the day when I was building I used a No. 3 tapered pin reamer with spiral flutes. Seemed to work just fine for "standard" bridge pins.

The non tapered bridge pins on your Ibanez is just an Ibanez thing they do on all of their acoustics. Nothing to do with it being Chinese. It’s just an Ibanez thing and they work just fine.