Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

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digidoc1010
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Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by digidoc1010 » Sun Oct 31, 2010 10:51 pm

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"Originally Posted on:"Sat Nov 21, 2009""

I have been thinking of moving to a 3/16" saddle with a back-tilt and wondered what effect if any it would have when using a UST pickup, since most transducers are only 3/32" or 1/8". I asked Rick Turner his opinion and Rick suggested I post our exchange and open this up for discussion. Here is what he had to say...

"It does make things a bit more problematic, to be sure, because of needing to get even pressure on the pickup. Yes, you can shim...slightly...but if the shim lifts the saddle off the pickup, you'll be in trouble. Best to do the tilt-back saddle routine, and then lay a strip of thin double stick tape on the underside of the pickup, and lay the pickup in along the front wall of the saddle slot to get maximum pressure."

And as for how it might affect unplugged tone due to the fact that a large portion of the saddle is not touching anything he said...

"This is a controversial issue. I personally don't think the compromise is a big deal. If the guitar is to be used live, it really must be plugged in. If it's to be plugged in, it should be as good that way as possible. If someone is really uptight about it, they should have a performance guitar optimized for plugging in and a guitar that is pristine with no pickups whatsoever. Just my opinion!"

I would love to hear from others who have done this and what your experiences, tips, tricks, etc are....

Dan

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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by Allen » Sun Oct 31, 2010 10:54 pm

Welcome to the forum Dan and thanks for posting that exchange.

I don't have any experience with your particular example as I use a 1/8" saddle. But after a discussion on the forum some time ago now where Rick talked about the benefits of tilting the saddle slot back between 7 and 9 degrees, I do that with all of mine now.
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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by Rick Turner » Sun Oct 31, 2010 10:55 pm

I hope my answer was clear re. "along the front wall". Of course, the pickup has to be at the bottom of the slot, but snugged up to the front wall of the slot.

BTW, as many have noted, the tilt-back saddle has multiple benefits whether you put a pickup in or not. It makes for a stronger bridge; it self-compensates for intonation if the action goes up or down; and I think it makes for an overall better connection between string and top. It certainly makes pickup balance a much easier issue to deal with. We hardly ever have to chase string balance, and we're putting in about 15 pickups a month, year in and year out on everything from ukes to six string basses.
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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by Nick » Sun Oct 31, 2010 10:57 pm

Rick Turner wrote:I hope my answer was clear re. "along the front wall". Of course, the pickup has to be at the bottom of the slot, but snugged up to the front wall of the slot.
Thanks for the clarification Rick, I thought that's what you had meant but still pictured the possibility of it being literally against the front wall, and was scratching my head (& there aint much carpet up there to begin with!) as to how that feat was achieved.

Welcome to the forum also Dan, hope you find it useful and feel free to add your 'theories' & input. Do you repair, build or abit of both?
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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by digidoc1010 » Sun Oct 31, 2010 10:58 pm

Rick,

Thanks for weighing in here. I posted this also on OLF and a couple of guys have said that they rout a channel along the front edge of the bottom of the saddle slightly shallower than the thickness of the pickup and have had good results. Any thoughts on this?


Allen,
Thanks for the welcome and for the information regarding the tilt-back saddle. I am really sold on this and can't wait to give it a go.

Hi Nick,
I am a very early builder currently working on Number 2, 3, and 4. Thanks for the welcome!

Dan

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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by Rick Turner » Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:00 pm

Dan, that would work, and it's basically the equivalent of putting in a shim slightly thinner than the pickup.

My question, though, is do you really need a wide saddle to get intonation right? I find a 1/8" saddle at the right slant works fine for me.
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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by digidoc1010 » Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:01 pm

Rick Turner wrote:My question, though, is do you really need a wide saddle to get intonation right? I find a 1/8" saddle at the right slant works fine for me.
Yeah, I had already started to think that this was a case of "too much sugar for a dime." I am thinking that what I'll do is go with a 1/8" saddle with a back-tilt. This will require only minor modification of my saddle slotting fixture and really won't require me to change my bridge at all. A 3/16" saddle would require a complete re-design. Thanks so much for your help on this.

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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by Rick Turner » Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:02 pm

If you're concerned about intonation, try making a temporary tailpiece for the guitar that lets you string it up before you glue the bridge on. The tailpiece can be attached at the strap button hole in the end of the guitar. Once you have a good idea of where the saddle witness point has to be for both E strings, you're pretty much home free on being able to set your saddle angle. Allow a tiny bit more compensation for the increased break angle which stiffens the string right where it goes over the saddle.
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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by Hesh1956 » Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:02 pm

I don't do the following but some builders will not cut the saddle slot until the bridge is glued on and the slot position is determined with things now in place.

I think that this is a great method too, certainly it has the potential to be as accurate or more accurate than positioning the bridge based on a pre-existing saddle slot location.

I use a 1/8" saddle and have more than enough room for intonation. The last couple of my guitars had USTs too and that was no problem with the 1/8" saddle.

Also I have always liked what I have heard about leaning the saddle back and it's something that I may incorporate on my guitars at some point. But I also wanted to mention that about a gillion Very Happy guitars have been successfully built with out leaning the saddle backwards and this process also adds some small level of additional complexity for newer builders that I am not sure that I would recommend until you are tooled-up and your chops are solid.

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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by Rick Turner » Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:03 pm

Hesh, once again, it's many years in the front lines of guitar repair that led me to tilting the saddle back. Yes, there are literally millions of guitars with vertical saddles...and as a guitar repairman, I've had to repair a lot of cracked bridges, warped bridges where the front wall was bulging forward, and deal with a lot of loose saddles from all that pressure on the front wall.

A lot of these little issues don't seem very important...until you've spent several years doing repairs full time, and then you see the same old problems coming up time and time again.

This is why I recommend that anyone who wants to get serious about building guitars should spend at least a couple of years doing real-world commercial guitar repair work. How else will you learn what's wrong about conventional guitar building?
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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by Hesh1956 » Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:04 pm

Hi Rick - don't get me wrong mate I agree with you.

But I also want to throw out the following: We all know that bridges can split/crack and most of us have seen this happen on guitars too. Certainly you have Rick and probably much more so with your experience level than others.

But don't you think that there are some fundamental reasons for these spits that most of the time account for why the bridges split?

For example, and these are all things that can lead to a bridge splitting and I am sure that there are more too:

1) Not enough meat/wood in front of the saddle

2) Saddle is too high, neck is over set

3) Flawed wood OR a wood type that is subject to splitting

4) Saddle is too tight

5) Saddle slot closely follows a grain line

And others. So my point is that if one eliminated these common reasons why bridges split how many bridge splits will we still see with a conventional, non-slanted saddle design? We can't know but I also know that if I pull my hand out of the barbie it might stop burning too... :D

So yeah I agree with you that slanting a saddle, if done correctly (I say correctly because there are as many ways to slant a saddle as there are builders doing it...) bridge splits are probably going to be reduced. But also if a non-slanted saddle is installed correctly as above how many bridge splits are we going to see?

I think that we are in agreement Rick I'm just not as keen to recommend that builders start slanting saddles from the getgo instead favoring to instill the value of fully understanding and appreciating more conventional guitar construction methods before moving on to the optimized and more complex stuff.

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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by Allen » Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:06 pm

While all of those things may contribute to a bridge splitting, and eliminating any or all of those could very well mitigate the possibility of occurring, slanting the saddle back is just not that difficult to do.

I'm not going to get into wether it makes or breaks an instrument. I've decided to make it part of every instrument that I build based on what I've read and observed after implementing it.

All I did was cut a shim on the table saw of the back tilt that I wanted and installed it in my saddle slotting jig underneath the bridge blank. Slotting the saddle after that is exactly the same as one that is not tilted back.

One very small step that is well within the skill set of anyone that is undertaking building a guitar.

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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by Hesh1956 » Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:07 pm

Looks simple enough Allen but I am wondering how you account for the top of the saddle being moved aft with the shim method? Seems to me in my best Colombo voice.... Very Happy that the placement of the slot, when it's going to be angled, will have to be recalculated based on the tilt of the saddle in order to have a proper range of saddle available for intonation.

Also when tilting a saddle a builder has to have better or excellent control of all things that speak to saddle height such as neck angle etc. Why? Because a straight up and down saddle (not tilted) is going to intonate in the same places pretty much if you have to reduce or increase saddle height (slightly) where as a slanted saddle the intonation points will be a function of the height AND tilt.

So don't get me wrong guys I agree that slanting is a cool thing to do with benefits but I again see things such as additional calculations and allowances for saddle tilt as to how this impacts intonation points and saddle height as added complexity.

When folks stop asking us about setting the neck angle etc then I will be more keen to tell a novice to go for a tilted saddle on the first go or early guitars.

Great jig Allen - may I bowwow your design please?

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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by Hesh1956 » Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:08 pm

Something else that came to mind when rereading my prior post for speeeling errors is this:

Do you folks ever wonder how when we are all long and gone one of our guitars will be considered by the repair folks that the then owner may take the guitars too?

For example, 15 years from now how will a Guitar Center tech view a tilted saddle? Will they assume that the builder was a master or will they think that the builder was soused and got it crooked? Will they make a new, proper slanted saddle or will them charge the customer for replacing your beautiful bridge with slanted saddle with a stinkin Martin belly bridge with conventional saddle AND then both the customer and tech will wonder why the guitar never sounded good again in terms of intonation AND compensation...

Same goes for about 100 things that I know that many of us do. 3 degree pins, the plethora of neck attachment methods, various glues to glue various things, etc.

My point is that since I started doing repair work too and apprenticing for David Collins we often talk about how what we do now will be perceived or perhaps even not understood later when we are fertilizer.

Serviceability is super important to consider with our guitar designs and building methods. We don't want a simple thing like making a new saddle to kill the potential of one of our guitars now do we when the person in the future that is repairing the saddle does not understand why the saddle is crooked.

By the way Rick YOU are the reason why I spent all last winter being a repair apprentice, sweeping floors, emptying trash, and smelling the farts of my shop mate..... Very Happy From the time I first started reading your posts you had an impact on me with this repair, repair, repair, GLO, GLO, hat on backwards stuff... :D

At the end of the day I believed that you were/are right Rick, except for maybe the hat on backwards, so I moved to improve my chops specifically in the repair side and with a master Luthier David Collins as well.

So no joking here - Thanks Rick!!!! I am a better builder because of you!

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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by Allen » Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:09 pm

I've got a pretty good idea of the hight I want and need for my saddle, so I start with that. Position the bridge so I've got my compensated string length set at the front edge of the saddle.

It's worked out for me on everyone I've built like this.

When you look from the side of the bridge, tilting the saddle back 9 degrees doesn't change the length very much at all with small adjustments in hight. Obviously if you start with a saddle 3 times taller than it needs to be you're going to run into trouble.

I get where you are thinking that if you drop the hight of the saddle the intonation is going sharp, but if you are in the ball park to start with the difference is easily corrected having a 1/8" saddle.
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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by digidoc1010 » Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:10 pm

Wow, you guys have been busy since I last checked in :D
Thank you all very much for all of the information. Hesh, I completely see your point about trying out more complex techniques while still a novice. I admit, I had already considered the issue of the tilt creating a situation where saddle height and position affect intonation. So, thank you for the words of caution and I am going to seriously consider if this is something I want to try on my Number 2 guitar (which is a super sweet set of Tiger Myrtle BTW).

Allen, thank you for the picture of your saddle slotting fixture. That makes a lot of sense and takes away some of the mystery. I had thought I would shim the laminate trimmer base but I really like how you shim the bridge instead. It seems more stable.

Rick, I really value your opinion on this and definitely see the benefits of the back-tilt. Suffice it to say I'm sold, it is now just a matter of whether I want to try it on my second guitar or wait and get a bit more set-up experience.

Thanks guys

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Re: Extra Wide Saddles and UST Pickups

Post by Allen » Sun Oct 31, 2010 11:10 pm

I should add that I've got a perspex template that screws on top of that jig that has a slot cut into it that my router collar rides in to cut the slot. I'm not doing it freehand. :lol:

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