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Just a quick question. The the placement of a saddle that has an already routed channel for the bridge. On a 25.4 scale setup, Do I need to worry so much about the string compensation? I know I need to double check measurements and make sure the factory cut is correct, but for the most part should it be in the ballpark anyway as long as the bridge is perpendicular to the fret board plane and is exactly 25.4 inches from the nut. (or twice 12 fret distance).

Also, Should I sand the thickness of the saddle to 3/32 "? The fret angle plane is exactly 3/32 to the top at the bridge location of 25.4.
It would make sense to keep the saddle just right at the same plane as the fret board if you laid a straight edge across the top of the guitar. (That is just my thinking, Id thought Id double check)

Oh, and is the Saddlematic worth 30 bucks from Stewmac.

John has an excellent video on saddle placement, and the subject has been discussed elsewhere in this forum...let's see...yes, here:
viewtopic.php?f=52&t=7243&p=39257&hilit ... ent#p39257

But for starters, you do NOT want the saddle placed at exactly 2X the scale length, you do need a fudge factor.

I use the stewmac saddle tool and it works great. Set the pins properly and you have your scale length plus compensation angle for the saddle. Just very minor tweaking from there if need be.

Compensation is one of those things that 99% of us won't be able to hear well enough to nail it down perfectly - especially me with bad hearing - so getting it close works for almost all of us.

In the scale lengths we all use (not double bass fiddles or ukeleles) you start by adding 1/10" to the scale length, and that is the distance from the front face of the nut to the center of the saddle at the high e string. The extra little length is to allow for accuracy in change of tone when bending the strings when you push them down behind the frets.

The 1/10" works for the high e string, but further compensation of 1/8" longer works for the low E, and the other strings go along for the ride when you connect these 2 points. If you look up "fully compensated saddle" you will see how to take the compensation one step further, but as I have mentioned, most of us can't detect these small differences.

John's video is very good. Here is how I solved the problem - I made a jig:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/ruby1638/ ... 130471994/

Simple piece of plywood with a stop that hooks into the nut slot. I made this for a 24.9" scale, so adding 1/10" gets you to 25" for the high e string, then adding another 1/8" get you to 25-1/8" for the low E.

When I first made the jig, I positioned the bridge with no saddle in the slot so the end of the jig was over the center of the slot. This is the third guitar I used this jig on, and I refined the jig by cutting 1/2 of the saddle thickness off the length, (3/64"), so I could just butt the saddle in the slot up to it - this is what you see in the picture.

I have used this for 3 different scale lengths. For a longer 25.4", I just hot-glued a thin strip on the end of the jig to make that end be in the right place. For a shorter scale of 23.3", I hot-glued another piece at the nut end in the right place to just hook that new piece into the nut slot.

Now that I have the jig, Easy-Peasy. It gives me a lot of confidence because I can measure it , measure it, measure it, then re-measure it to make sure, then just clamp it on the neck and go.

Ed

ruby@magpage.com wrote: Now that I have the jig, Easy-Peasy. It gives me a lot of confidence because I can measure it , measure it, measure it, then re-measure it to make sure, then just clamp it on the neck and go.

Ed

You know, that might just work. I'm currently rebuilding a guitar with a 24.9" scale, and building another with the same scale length. I know that the rebuild is spot-on, so it seems I could just make the jig to fit it, and transfer the jig to the new one.

Thanks for the tip!

that is a lot like the ones we make here Ed. One thing to say about them is you can adjust the length a touch for the various playing styles.
On initial set up you would like to be about 2-3 cents flat to accommodate the bridge rotation . All is good and have fun

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3qhv2ftp9bi5 ... AlMea?dl=0

So Above is a link to some pictures. I didn't make a real fancy jig. But it seemed to work. I got a piece of wood and marked my 25.5 and 25.5/8 mark. I then stuck some scrap wood in the slot for bumpers to see whether the marks were in the center of the bridge slot. To see if the bridge is center all I have to do is measure edge distance from the long piece of wood at the 12th fret on either side to see if they are equal. If you can see it, I have 25.5 for the little E and 25 5/8 for the big E. The bridge is perpendicular to the fret board by a 64th of an inch.