Why compensated saddle

Brightness, clarity, and sustain are the primary characteristics affected in this area, albeit by a small amount that is not usually detectable by the beginner guitar player with an untrained ear. Bone is the most common material and comes standard on most guitars.

However, other materials that have gained popularity over the years are available. TUSQ is synthetic ivory and has been my personal favorite nut material for nearly 20 years. The sustain and clarity of this nut is superior to any other material I have tried and is an excellent option for a Telecaster.

TUSQ very much compliments that uniquely bright and slappy Tele sound. In my experience, the tonal differences are more easily discernible with an upgraded nut than with the saddle, so if you are the type who likes to customize, start with upgrading the nut before you upgrade the saddle.

Still, as a man-made construct that uses organic and synthetic materials, there will always be imperfections. As a beginner, you should know that if you have tuning problems, the answer is not always to upgrade to a new guitar but instead to upgrade your current guitar. Professional Musician and Instructor. I have been playing guitar for over 25 years with 20 years experience on stage and coaching other musicians.

The Fender Jazzmaster is a renowned name to guitarists all over the world. Intended to resemble the solid body alternative to the hollow body archtop guitars, Fender had hoped to initiate a For countless fans worldwide, the definitive image of an ear-shattering rock and roll show is the wall of Marshall amps, notably the Super Lead series. The famous Marshall stack, with a single Skip to content A guitar saddle is part of the bridge where the strings sit.

There are two types of saddles — compensated slanted and uncompensated straight. The string length is measured from the nut to the saddle. Do Saddles Affect Tone? Originally Posted by Misty Originally Posted by wrench I've never seen conclusive science or a quantitative method to intonate an acoustic guitar in one process.

I agree with murrmac's comment about the core, but wouldn't it be great to be able to make a set of measurements, then locate the slot, profile a saddle, and get it right? When a tech determines a relocation of the saddle slot is necessary, how does one accurately determine the right location? Trial and error seems really inefficient when you're talking about filling and re-machining saddle slots.

Originally Posted by LiveMusic. Very interesting. While I understand how requirements could vary based on the strings used and the set up, I guess I just assumed in this day and age someone would have figured out a way to make this more of an exact science. I'm surprised that some guitar companies with large budgets e. Taylor, Fender, etc. Has anyone ever seen a saddle for an acoustic guitar that is adjustable for each of the 6 strings using a similar principle to that used on electric guitars, but with bone vs.

Its also interesting to consider that fretless string instruments violins, cellos, etc. I guess that's because finger placement determines intonation vs. I don't think a piano is a fair comparison because piano strings aren't stretched to a fret.

They are hammered and left in static position just to vibrate. Could the act of vibrating actually affect the intonation by enough to cause tuning issues that wouldn't require very sophisticated equipment to pick up the difference? Originally Posted by C. The real world is a complicated place. Scientists attempt to understand, quantify and predict how objects in the real world behave.

More often than not, in order to do so, scientists simplify the real-world object and its behavior. They do so because the real-world object is too complex to meaningfully study. Once simplified sufficiently, the scientist can create a model - mathematical or physical - of that object and its behavior.

The behavior of the model can then be studied in response to changes in the variables that have been included in the model. In the real world, the vibration of strings is very complex. To attempt to understand some aspects of vibrating strings, scientists created a simplified model, generally referred to as "an ideal string".

The simplified model is very well understood and very well quantified - it is a second-order partial differential equation. As you'll see, even in its simplified model, it isn't without complexity and isn't something the average person is likely to easily understand.

That includes most luthiers and repair persons. The simplified "ideal string" falls short in many ways from accurately predicting the behavior of real strings vibrating in the real world. If your guitar doesn't intonate properly then the compensated saddle will help with that. Improvement in tone I find that the best-sounding Tele bridge is the inexpensive stamped steel original version,. Anything fancier read: thicker, machined sounds less lively to me.

I like Rutters cold-rolled-steel Broadcaster saddles, which happen to be compensated. The compensation doesn't change a thing, except that the guitar intonates a bit more accurately than before. A lot of people prefer the sound of brass. Different tastes. Compensation is about intonation, not tone.

For allllll the guys who say "you can't hear it", I bet most don't ever play past the 5th fret. If you venture up the neck further, like I do, you Can hear it go out of tune pretty easily. I have them on mine, had it not came with them i would be ok too. Does improved intonation mean improved tone?

It's a goofy argument. The word 'tone' has no meaning when describing how a guitar sounds. Nov 25, A customary way of compensating for this is to have the saddle carved so some strings break across it at slightly different distances.

In effect this makes the playable "scale" of each string slightly longer or shorter so they are as close in intonation as possible. The B string is the most noticeable when it comes to this so it is the string needing the greatest compensation. Some guitars require the compensation to be fined tuned by further shaping the saddle, but most will work great with a compensated saddle just as it comes from the dealer.

Fortunately many guitar makers are now using bone saddles in their stock models. But not all of them come compensated. If you are a player who rarely brakes away from strumming Hank Williams chord progressions down at the first fret you may not need to bother with a compensated bone saddle.

But if you play up the neck at all or your music features melodic structure or a lot of sustained notes, fingerstyle patterns or chord voicing that take advantage of octave parings or the harmonic potential stretched out across the fingerboard then I would think a compensated bone saddle can only enhance the sound of your guitar, no matter how much your guitar cost or how old it may be.

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