Bone Guitar Saddle. You Sketch It, We Make It.

Your guitar saddle plays a very important part in transmitting the vibration of the strings into the guitar's body where it is turned into sound. We supply complete design and manufacture ensuring that you end up with the best possible sound and playability from your guitar.

Material, Manufacture, Advice and Communication
You supply us with a sketch with sizes, possibly supported by pictures, and we will propose the design o build and make your saddle.
This saddle is hand made from high density Ox bone and is for use on steel strung acoustic guitars.
We make the parts using precision measurement, precision jigged routers, grinders and saws coupled with careful hand finishing and polishing. An accurate, high-quality manufacture results.
We communicate closely with the buyer to make sure we get the right specification and you receive the full benefit of our knowledge of guitar saddles.
We supply comprehensive advice sheets for fitting.
Your saddle replacement is in good hands. We have the right experience in manufacture and we know what a guitar needs to give the best tone and intonation.

As part of this service, we offer to completely redesign your saddle - all we need is the saddle length and saddle slot width, the fretboard radius and the saddle height (measure from the base of the saddle to the crown and so it is the sum of the amount of saddle IN the bridge slot AND the amount ABOVE the bridge slot.

Some useful facts about steel-strung guitar action
A typical action (string to the top of fret distance) at the 12th fret is 2.3mm for low E and 1.8mm for high E (individuals may need lower or higher and high spots on the fretboard may limit how low it can go before rattles occur, also an incorrectly adjusted truss rod can hamper low action and playability). Medium strings are typically 1.4mm diameter for low E - hence the 12th fret action is just over one and a half string diameters for low E. The fact that the 12th fret is halfway along the guitar string means that changing a saddle height by a certain amount (eg raising it by 1mm) will result in a change of action at the 12th fret by half that amount - in this case raising it by 0.5mm

The saddle profile is designed to make the strings sit in an arc which follows the radius of the fretboard with adjustments to ensure the 12th fret action (string to fret distance at 12th fret) of low (bass or thick wound) E is ~0.5mm higher compared to high (treble or thin) E.  If you prefer the difference to be more or less than 0.5mm then we can factor that into the dressing. The extra action for low E A D  is basically to allow the bass strings a little more room to vibrate. This action change is graduated to achieve a comfortable feel all the way up the fretboard - the smooth arc of the strings also looks great!  We use graphics to visualise your saddle design for you before committing to the build.

Types of Guitar
This saddle manufacture is suitable for all guitars from 1/4 size (typically 50mm length saddle with 1 to 2 mm width) to large 12 string guitars with saddles over 80 mm wide

What is Compensation at the Saddle
Acoustic guitar saddles are often shaped to provide compensation - this makes the strings sound closer to the desired pitch at the frets by altering the contact point at the saddle for the individual strings. Notes sounded when fretted may not be ideal pitch due to a variety of effects such as the strings stretching when pressed down. Correcting for these effects gives more accurate note pitches which result in better sounding harmonies between notes - your guitar will sound more in tune the more compensation it has. A chromatic tuner allows the effects to be measured.

Fitting Recommendations
Its recommended that the width is made a bit larger than the existing slot width and it's sanded to fit perfectly by the fitter (this is an easy job and we supply an instruction video and the sandpaper!). Purely acoustic guitar saddles should be a good snug fit to get maximum coupling from the string to the top of the guitar. Electro-acoustic guitars fitted with an undersaddle pickup should have the saddles fitted so that there's even pressure across the length of the pickup - which sits all the way across the bottom of the saddle slot - hence a snug fitting saddle is still desirable but not so tight so at to prevent the saddle bedding down nicely on the pickup.

We supply complete design and manufacture ensuring that you end up with the best possible sound and playability from your guitar.

Please note that as this item is CUSTOM MADE to your specification we cannot accept returns - this is in accordance with UK Government Distance Selling laws for Custom Made items.