<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN"> <html> <head> <meta content="text/html;charset=ISO-8859-1" http-equiv="Content-Type"> <title></title> </head> <body bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000"> It always struck me as very likely that any attempt to actually bend the string around the bridge pin is bound to damage or weaken the bridge pin hole to some small degree before the steel string actually does form a real bend.  I am open to someone showing me how this is not the case mind you... but wood crushes so to thee degree much more easily then metal wire at tension will bend to the point of kinking around a bridge pin. As to Don Manninos point about these kinks moving slightly not having any impact on the stability... well thats sort of my point as well.  I dont see the artificial bending as needed, and it strikes me more as potentially destructive.  Heck.. I'm even real careful about leveling strings at capos / agraffes.  I just am kind of a minimalist when it comes to this kind of thing. A light tap on the the string on the bridge surface with a wooden dowel is as far as I go with any kind of string seating. What I DO find interesting tho is just how much you can change and see remains stable the tension of the back length without really changing the speaking length pitch at all.  I love ETD's for looking at this kind of thing. Cheers RicB <blockquote>My porpoise on doing most of these things is to have the string leave all the direction changing places as straight as possible.  The bridge pin places I do by GENTLY squeezing a couple of strings like so...    \| |/ "borrowing" a string from the next unison if necessary. I emphasize "gently". Naturally, you don't want to loosen bridge pins...</blockquote> </body> </html>