Wound_Up
Tele-Afflicted
I'm actually getting ready to replace mine with Gotoh In Tune saddles. I just can't convince myself to change them yet since the slanted ones are working fine currently lol.
E and B intonation
- Thread starter smoothpete1957
- Start date
I'm actually getting ready to replace mine with Gotoh In Tune saddles. I just can't convince myself to change them yet since the slanted ones are working fine currently lol.
Jazzerstang
Tele-Afflicted
So funny… I had the EXACT issue and the tilted bars solved it. Less of a compensation.
57joonya
Tele-Afflicted
I think the cuts are a little extreme in those myself .
It seems your stuck , either in between perfect , or try the slanted ones . That was the first time I experienced close to perfect intonation on a telecaster . Glendale compensated brass saddles , which look exactly like these , but as I think someone was mentioning earlier , even with these intonation “cuts” , maybe you can bend the screw to the right a little ? That would make it less extreme, but seems to me that would be very chancy, trying to get that perfect
4pickupguy
Doctor of Teleocity
I like the idea of using the three saddle bridges but intonation issues drive me absolutely insane. 6 saddle bridges just work for me. Done.
cousinpaul
Friend of Leo's
Raising a saddle has the same effect on intonation as moving the saddle forward. Try raising the B slightly. You may have to go back and touch up the E but by juggling the two a bit you should be able to nail it without messing up your action. It's the way we had to do it in the days before compensated saddles.
Another thing to remember is that the intonation on some guitars is just better than others, even when using the exact same saddles and bridges. I usually find that my Rutters and Gotoh compensated saddles get close enough for me, but every once in a while I'll find a guitar that seems to be noticeably off on one of the saddles. Sometimes it's just the nature of the beast!
We already deal with imperfect intonation, are you proposing to add some imperfect action too?
cousinpaul
Friend of Leo's
If you're using Wilkinson saddles, absolutely.
I’ll be more inclined to toss them completely at this point
smoothpete1957
NEW MEMBER!
Update - I turned the E/B saddle upside down to the ‘smooth’ face.
PROBLEM SOLVED! Perfect intonation.
PROBLEM SOLVED! Perfect intonation.
I turned eb and ae upside down.
Freeman Keller
Doctor of Teleocity
For what it is worth, if I have any questions about compensation I'll calculate how much is needed for a given string and tuning and measure to see if its going to work. I'll still set it with a strobe tuner, my old ears can't hear five cents, but its nice to know if your saddles are within the range needed.
bendercaster
Tele-Afflicted
Ths is something I like about the these Wilkinson saddles. Flip them over and they are normal barrel saddles. If you use a wound G, you:ll get better intonation with the normal side of the middle saddle too.
bottlenecker
Poster Extraordinaire
Guitars already have imperfect action and imperfect compensation.
And guitarists all have imperfect intonation.
It's almost like perfect is just a lie your tuner tells you.
AndrewG
Friend of Leo's
Indeed, that's the one flaw in the Pythagorean formula for tuning intervals. You'll never achieve 'perfect' intonation in all keys no matter how much compensation is applied. We have it easy compared with piano tuners and 88 sharp and flat keys to tune! In the early '60s my parents bought an old upright piano, and I found it fascinating when the blind tuner showed up with nothing more than his ears, a tuning fork and spanner.
Pythagorean tuning - Wikipedia
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AAT65
Poster Extraordinaire
Going off-topic a bit here but… that is not the full story. Part of the compensation is to deal with having to stretch the string to fret it: but most of it - and the reason a fatter string needs more compensation length - is to allow for the fact that no real string is a theoretical ideal string which can vibrate freely along its entire length, and the fatter the string the more length it needs to “get moving”. That is why halving the length of the string doesn’t double the frequency: you lose a bit of length at each end where the string is transitioning from its fixed point to its vibrating behaviour, and that lost length doesn’t significantly change as you move up the neck.
Low relief, a well cut nut and low action would allow you to eliminate almost all of the string stretch issue: but there is no way to make a physical object that acts exactly like a theoretical string in a diagram
.
Matthias
Friend of Leo's
+1 on what @bottlenecker says. Compensated saddles will only be perfect if the relative string heights are set to an ideal position, and this will vary too depending on radius I would think as that’ll where you set the relative heights of string. I would think a lot of the compensated saddles are designed for 7.25” and indeed my Wilkinson saddles work well on my reissue ‘69 Thinline.
Great to hear you fixed it for your set-up @smoothpete1957
Great to hear you fixed it for your set-up @smoothpete1957
bottlenecker
Poster Extraordinaire
Going off-topic a bit here but… that is not the full story. Part of the compensation is to deal with having to stretch the string to fret it: but most of it - and the reason a fatter string needs more compensation length - is to allow for the fact that no real string is a theoretical ideal string which can vibrate freely along its entire length, and the fatter the string the more length it needs to “get moving”. That is why halving the length of the string doesn’t double the frequency: you lose a bit of length at each end where the string is transitioning from its fixed point to its vibrating behaviour, and that lost length doesn’t significantly change as you move up the neck.
Low relief, a well cut nut and low action would allow you to eliminate almost all of the string stretch issue: but there is no way to make a physical object that acts exactly like a theoretical string in a diagram
That is not the reason for compensated bridge saddles. Steel and hawaiian guitars have zero compensation. When a person plays hawaiian style on a guitar with compensation, non-slant chords are less in tune as they go higher up the neck, because of the compensation.
If you do string bends on your guitar you will notice that the different guage strings have to move different distances to produce the same amount of pitch change. Especially between wound and unwound strings.
When you push a string to a fret you are stretching it, raising it's pitch, and this is what compensation is for.
AAT65
Poster Extraordinaire
No point in going “yes it is no it isn’t” but string-stretching really is only part of the story.
However so long as you adjust everything properly you can get as good (or bad) a result whether you accept that or not
.
bottlenecker
Poster Extraordinaire
No point in going “yes it is no it isn’t” but string-stretching really is only part of the story.
However so long as you adjust everything properly you can get as good (or bad) a result whether you accept that or not
I agree there's no point in going back and forth. One of us is wrong, and that person is contributing to the misinformation that people find when trying to learn on the internet.
So for the person finding this in a search, I will say nothing more and leave them to ponder this picture of a modern pedal steel guitar bridge and the position of it's twelve saddles.
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