Baroque guitar bridges - slots or holes?

[Monica Hall]

The bridge of my baroque guitar has slots for the strings to be tied to rather than holes pierced through it as on the classical guitar.   I was under the impression that this was common if not standard for baroque guitars.   I was wondering whether that is actually the case and what the reason might be for having slots instead of holes.  What do other people do?   Any ideas out there? 

[Akira Sakamoto]

Hello, I think I replied to similar question in the past but cannot find the thread.

 

My humble or wild guess is that the slot enables you to adjust the spacing between the pair of strings in a course or to some extent even the spacing between the courses, as oppsed to the holes that fix everything except for the string hight.  I actually experimented with different spacings on my renaissance guitar which also has slots for the strings.

[Peter Forrester]

Akira is right. I think that I mentioned then that all the 17th c. Italian guitars I know have holes. The Voboams and (all?) other French guitars have slots.  The Ashmolean Stradivari is an exception with slots formed from inverted triangles - easy to make, and retaining gluing surface - but Sasha(?) said that this bridge is a replacement.  I think I have come across one similar one somewhere.  Ask Sasha!

[Monica Hall]

Thank you both for the information.   I thought it had come up before and vaguely remembered what was said but it is helpful to have it again.   I read somewhere that with slots the contact between the bridge and the table is much reduced from what it would be with a solid bridge and that this enhances the treble register of the instrument.   I wonder whether this is actually the case.

[Peter Forrester]

I have been told something similar about thinner cittern bridges.  Viols?  What also happens is that the reduced gluing area makes the bridge more likely to come off, hence a greater survival rate for Italian bridges, I think, and also those replaced French bridges with a kind of ledge behind the slots. eg. Paris. Jean Voboam 1690.