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Any sources for high quality bone saddles that are slightly over 1/4" thick (to allow a snug fit in 1/4" slot)?

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Brian

You never know what you are capable of until you actually try.

https://www.howardguitarsdelaware.com/

Dang. They're proud of 'em.

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I see 1/4” available at StewMac, and maybe other places, but to get to the heart of the matter, you will probably have better luck guaranteeing a snug fit by using a smaller bit than 1/4” and sneaking up on the width of the channel, rather than using a 1/4” bit and thinning the saddle to fit.

That's a good idea. I have a 6mm router bit that should do the trick.

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Christie Song, if you’re going to buy in even a small quantity will be the best price by far.

http://www.chrislintrading.com/parts.htm


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I have bought a lot of bits and pieces from Bezdez on ebay. Good service and well priced.

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/OVERSIZE-BONE-G ... SwJXxcUKhW

I will measure these when I am in the shop, but I am sure they are over 1/4” even though it say 7/32”.

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Bridge saddle, people - NOT nuts.

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Oops, gotta read better, 1/4” made me go nuts!!

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Why a saddle so wide? (thick)

Mike, A good question. I spent about 5 days (not continuous time) fine tuning the intonation for my 25.4" scale. By using a high quality strobe tuner and final tuning by ear I was able to dial in the intonation to a nearly perfect result. As you no doubt know, any equal temperament is never going to be absolutely perfect but I came as close as I could get. The process entailed checking octaves, fifths and thirds between two strings, rather than s just setting the octave on each string and hoping for the best between strings. This result was arrived at by intonating both the saddle and the nut. The resultant break points of each string at the saddle could probably be achieved with a Lowden-style split saddle but am opting for a single, wide saddle. 1/4" width is required to accommodate the differing break points for each string.

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^^^ Done it myself several times. Lots of work, but worth it to the client. Charge accordingly, too. ^^^

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There’s always Petsmart. One of their cleaned dog chew bones yields several saddles. It’s just a bit of work with the bandsaw and the sander. Unless I need something odd, I buy the prepared blanks from the usual sources. But, for odd stuff, the white bone at Petsmart works just fine.

Is it already bleached?

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"Act your age, not your shoe size" - Prince

You have to pick ones that are bleached. You can have them flavored, covered in peanut butter, or pretty greasy. I use the beached ones.

Good to know. Next time I drop by Ninth Circle of Hell Music I'll run in.... (Pet Smart is next to GC).

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Allied has 6.5mm https://alliedlutherie.com/collections/bone-shell/products/bone-saddles

Or better yet, use nut compensation. Better intonation, and less saddle compensation needed, which means less difference between strings so a narrower saddle gets the job done.

Dennis, Thanks for the tip on Allied. I seem to forget that they are a full service luthier house rather than solely a wood supplier.
As I mentioned earlier in the thread, I compensated the nut. And not subtlety either. I'm curious about your comment regarding a narrower saddle will get the job done with nut compensation. This is certainly counter to what 5 days of staring at a strobe, listening to out-of-phase beats between strings, and breaking a number of strings with repeated up-and-down tensioning yielded for me.

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Sorry, I missed that bit.

Most likely you're compensating the nut in the wrong direction, which increases the necessary saddle compensation. There are two good ways to look at it:

1. Imagine you start off with the nut at the 0 fret position. Then compensate the saddle until 12th fret notes play the same frequency as 12th fret harmonics. This is a standard setup.

If you move the nut endpoint farther from the 12th fret, the harmonic will be flattened, but the 12th fret note will not be affected (assuming string tension is not changed). So then you need to move the saddle endpoint farther from the 12th fret as well. This will flatten both the 12th fret note and harmonic, but it will affect the note more strongly since the active string length is shorter, so you can make the note and harmonic match again. This is probably what happened to you. It will still sound decent, but worse than a standard setup. Or at least it should. I'm not sure why you're getting good results on thirds and such if this is the case.

If you move the nut endpoint closer to the 12th fret, then the saddle endpoint also needs to be closer to the 12th fret for the note and harmonic to match. This is (or should be) the good way.

2. The reason nut compensation helps in the first place is because there's a fundamental difference between fretted and open notes: when the string is pushed down on a fret, it stretches a little which increases the tension.

If you forget about open notes and just check the frequencies of all fretted notes, you'll find that the best saddle compensation is a little more than half of what's typically used. The open notes will be way off, but all fretted notes will sound great. Since moving the nut has no effect on fretted notes, nut compensation allows you to fix the open notes without having to screw up the fretted notes in the process.

Thanks for your reply. I really don't think I am compensating the nut incorrectly. What I wound up with is very similar to what was talked about and illustrated in the GAL Quarterly some years ago. As is somewhat standard practice, the end of the fingerboard is shortened relative to the mathematical "0". Strings 6-3 have varying setbacks, with 3 having the greatest amount (which would place it closer to the "0" position) and 6 being closer to the actual end of the fingerboard (maximum amount of shortening at the 1st fret). The 4th and 5th fall in line between 6 and 3, more or less. The 2nd string looks more the the 6th, i.e. closer to the end of the shortened fingerboard. And the 1st string has a bit of setback, about like the 5th string.
I have to disagree with you about moving the nut has no effect on the fretted note. By altering both ends of the string, either with nut setback or bridge compensation, you are essentially moving the fret slots up or down relative to the length of the entire string. By altering the length of the string at the nut you are altering the position of all the frets along the entire length of the string.

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Yep, that sounds like how it should be. How strange. Do your 12th fret notes and harmonics match? I'd also like to know the distance from 12th fret to saddle endpoint on each string, to try and figure out what's going on. But if you'd rather just buy some wide saddles and continue on, that's fine too


Imagine a test rig with a fixed tuner and bridge pin, and movable nut, saddle, and fret. Tune up the string, hold it down at the fret, and move the nut back and forth. The active length of string doesn't change, and tension should be more or less unaffected. So where would the change come from?

Yes, the 12th fret harmonics and fretted notes match.
If you move the nut you are altering the string length. By changing the distance between 0 fret and fret 1 you are essentially moving the entire fingerboard up or down on the length of the string, if we think of the bridge and nut as fixed points rather than the fingerboard. The distances between fret slots are fixed based on our calculated string length, as you know. So, by chopping 1/8" off the end of the fingerboard (extreme example for illustration only), all the frets are flattened relative to the speaking length of the string. The speaking length of the string is now 1/8" less than our calculated string length. This flattening effect would be most apparent in frets 1-7 where the distances are greater. Conversely, if we add 1/8" to the end of the fingerboard all frets will be made sharp relative to the speaking length.

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Only the open string length. Fret to saddle length is only affected by moving the saddle.


Moving the nut is equivalent to moving the frets and saddle together. To effectively move the fingerboard, you'd have to move both nut and saddle.

If you do a search for nut compensation you’ll fine a lot of conversation about this back as far as 2005/2006.
The consensus was to shorten the distance between the zero and 1st fret by 1/32”, thus eliminating the issue at the nut.

All my scale templates are made this way and I’ve been able to get very acceptable intonation with a 1/8” saddle width.

Taking 3 days to set up your intonation seems very excessive.


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Rod, I am well aware of the practice of removing 1/32" from the end of the fingerboard and setting intonation. This method was the starting point of the GAL lecture and write-up in the Quarterly. The goal is to see if intonation can be improved from very acceptable intonation. The conclusion of the GAL article was that it can be improved upon and specific steps were laid out to achieve this. My results confirm improvements can be made.
The time I spent dialing the intonation in was not on an individual instrument ready for sale. I have a quick-and-dirty test guitar I slapped together using orphaned components. I used this guitar to come up with the master measurements which will be used on real guitars. The measurements became the template that will require no adjustments.
Dennis, I am struggling to see your point. If I am understanding correctly, you assert that it doesn't make any difference where the nut is placed once the string is fretted. Is this your stance?

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