Just wrapping up the acoustic action series with a few final thoughts on split saddles, shims, and break-angles. This will see you set to adjust pretty most acoustic guitars.
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We’ve just seen how to figure out your target acoustic guitar action using some easy geometry. Let’s see how to modify the saddle to get there.
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Lowering the action on an acoustic guitar is a little more fraught. It’s not easily reversible so it’s important to get things right. A little geometry will help.
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Earlier this week, I stopped in the middle of a job and made a very simple tool to make this job easier. Like embarrassingly simple. But, I was reminded of an important life lesson at the same time.
Check it out…
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Bone for tone, right? Usually, I’d agree. But not all bone is created equal. Check it out…
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Normally, Id recommend a bone saddle as a good upgrade for an acoustic instrument. However, here’s a rare instance where I’d advise against bone. Takamine-style integrated pickups don’t always play nicely with bone saddles.
Find out more…
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Sometimes, it seems like elves visit your music room every night and loosen some of the screws on your guitar — usually the saddle screws. Why do these screws keep getting loose and rattling about?
And more importantly, how can you prevent it…
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Up until a little while ago, the term ‘witness points’ was not one I knew. Turns out, though, it’s a very useful concept to understand — especially if you’re having problems getting a string intonated before running out of saddle travel.
Check it out…
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A reader request, this one. Floyd Rose trems are less than straightforward in many areas and setting height and radius on the saddles is definitely one of those.
Get the info on how to change Floyd saddle height…
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I thought it’d be useful to look at some of the other ways a radius gauge can be not just useful, but indispensable.
Radius gauges should form part of the toolkit of any guitar setter-upper… Setupper… Setterer-upperer… Anyone wanting to work with guitars.
Here's some of the ways to use radius gauges.
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Getting the top of an acoustic instrument moving is vital to getting the best tone from it. You have to make sure you're transferring as much of the strings' energy as possible and a too low a saddle can mess that up and really kill your tone.
Find out more…
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This is an acoustic guitar bridge and there’s something wrong with this picture. Well, the picture’s ok, but there’s definitely a problem with the guitar.
You can see how low the saddle is. The string’s have no ‘break’ angle over it—that first string sits almost horizontally on the saddle.
This means the strings impart very little downward pressure to the saddle. No downward pressure means that much of the strings’ vibration is lost rather than being transferred into the guitar top (which is what provides most of your tone and volume with an acoustic instrument). Poor tone and poor sustain.
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