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I wonder if anyone can help me out. I seem to remember a thread some time back where a builder provided a compensated saddle for a nylon string guitar, probably a classical. This was a straight saddle installed in the bridge at an angle off from the normal perpendicular to the center line of the instrument, rather than the intricately faceted saddles with a different end-point for each string. I would like to experiment with this approach on my own guitars (flamenco and classical), but don't know where to start.

If anyone can provide some info' on this or point me to appropriate blogs, articles, threads, etc. I would appreciate it greatly.

Thanks,
Max

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Max Bishop
Brighton, Michigan

About a decade or so ago I started to use a slanted saddle in a manor I belive you are describing and found that it really made no difference at all in the classical guitars intonation. The slanted ones were just as hard to play in tune as the straight ones

So I just build them straight just like they have been doing for the last 100+ years. Sometimes it seems to help to notch back the G string to make it longer.

As usual, Trevor Gore goes into nylon string compensation in excruciating detail in his tomes. Greg Byers wrote an article on on Classical compensation in the Fall '96 issue of 'American Lutherie'.

To really get the intonation right on all frets you need to compensate both the nut and the saddle. Nylon strings, being 'stretchier' than steel, need less of this, but they still can use some. One of the problems with figuring out how much to dial in is that 'nylon' is not like steel; it's class of materials that vary far more in composition and properties than the different kinds of steel do. One compensation setup will work pretty well with most different brands of steel strings, but different brands of Classical guitar strings can require quite different compensation at both ends. This is particularly true of the G string, the bette noir of the Classical guitar. In the end, you have to figure out what's going to work on a case by case basis, at least as far as string brands go. There are a couple of ways to do this: there is a mathematical way of figuring out what it 'should' be for a given string, or you can set up a rigid rig and make measurements. Both Gore and Byers give some 'typical' offsets, and, as Gore says, almost anything you do is likely to be an improvement over doing nothing...

www.byersguitars.com/intonation

mc

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Mike Collins

Here's my version of compensated saddle. Not my design. I stole it from David LaPlante.

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Waddy

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