Compensated and non-compensated saddles

This might have fit in another category but I suppose I'm more interested in layman/ player's views.

I wondered how people felt about the importance or otherwise of having a compensated saddle and if some here might have 'reverted' to non-compensated for one reason or another.

I've been making my own saddles for about eighteen years now. Often one or more guitar of mine will be played or left in Open C or Eb/ D Standard. It has felt that lower tunings might even have benefited from lack of compensation, if the saddle slot is slanted enough that the bottom string doesn't suffer being tuned to C, or something B - i.e that on aggregate the lack of compensation worked out for the strings overall.

I have at times heard the shrill sound for the top E if the action is both low and the bearing point is perhaps too sharp, and the bearing point of the 6th string can't afford to be too 'sharp' if trying to pursue perfect compensation as it seems to damage the string and make for odd overtones.

A non-compensated saddle doesn't quickly get pitted and perhaps it's tonally better.

I would gather scale length has some bearing on how desirable a compensated saddle is, especially if any detuning is going to be done.

My Guild has one of my compensated saddles in which is kind of like the miniature sculpture you might get with a boutique-y kind of guitar. This one went well and given what a hassle it was getting the bottom flush with the pickup, an in this instance counter-intuitive endeavour, I don't imagine making another soon. My Sigma has a non-compensated saddle I made. The original compensated saddle was no more in tune, and was possibly less so. It may be a near fluke but the action of the Sigma as I've set it, neither easy nor difficult, and the struggle-free height of the nut slots may have helped this guitar's intonation.

(Would anyone here know when compensated saddles first appeared?)

I've seen some very expensive handmade guitars with non-compensated saddles and have met one London-based guitar repairer (with very famous clientele) who did not believe in compensated saddles.

For anyone still reading, well done, and what do you reckon?

[Mr Fingers]

In my experience, everything you describe is true. Compensation improves the intonation on my guitars that have it, but on some, the compensation does result in non-optimum break angle and surface contact, string-to-saddle. I prefer the compensated saddles without excessive, exaggerated break points. My Collings' saddle provides nice string contact and avoids sharp breaks while still shifting the string length to provide decent compensation. Action is equally important to compensation, as overly-high action, or playing w/ excess string pressure both replicate "bending" a string and compromise intonation.

[Von Beerhofen]

When looking at it from a scientific viewpoint intonation is going to be different for either saddle. How that plays out in music is probably debatable but from the scientific standpoint intonations are often required for certain types of music, hence the different tuning scales for instruments.

There's just a difference in how chords sound with none intonated saddles. They're slightly off pitch but this also brings a chorusing effect into the chord you play which isn't entirely predictable.

Precise intonation to whatever tuning should leave you without any surprises but the fretboard on guitars are not nearly as precisely tuned as individual strings in a piano can be and it's usually the player who determines wether the instrument is in tune or not. The audience often doesn't have a clue of the involved problems of intonation, especially not when a band or orchestra is performing in a room which influences the listener's perception.

I'm sure compensated saddles influence the intonation but wether it's beneficial to your music is for you to decide. In the old days compensated saddles didn't exist, conclusion, intonation was either influenced another way or not needed for the music of that era. Possibly saddle angles weren't as precise as they are now but the music of that era would reflect that.

Compensated saddles are a modern day twist on trying to get a more precise intonation, and with that some of the nice disharmonies disappear. Ancient music is dictated by the era and instruments when it was produced and I don't think compensated saddles would properly perform such music.

It's just a fraction off and that's how it used to be prior to the invention of the compensated saddle. I don't even know when the first compensated saddle was invented but I can't remember seeing it on any pictures in my guitar research other then on modern guitars.

Strings lose intonation pretty fast, where one saddle may sound off pitch the other one may actually start sounding better over time, that's just a hypothetical standpoint but perhaps worth considering.

I'll be keeping an eye on opinions with this one, because the above only reflects my personal thoughts, there's no historic background to it and it's not supposed to be taken as an explanation, I'm as curious as anyone else and often asked myself the same question.

Ludwig

[JeffreyAK]

I think it comes down to your ear, really. If you can achieve adequate (to you) intonation without a compensated saddle, then obviously there's no reason to have one. All my guitars have compensated saddles and have good-to-perfect intonation, but it's hard to say how well they would do with uncompensated saddles, other than not as good. I've owned acoustics without compensated saddles that were "good enough" as long as I didn't stray too far from the nut. I know my Strat is quite far from a straight saddle, with each of the 6 saddles tuned individually for perfect intonation, but that gets played all up and down the neck so it's pretty demanding. It also has oddball string gauges to accommodate my preferred oddball tuning, and that affects the optimum saddle positions.

[dragon1952]

Sometimes builders use uncompensated saddles to be more period-correct, as in trying to provide a more authentic copy of a specific guitar from a specific period , so keep that in mind.

[Greg Ballantyne]

It can depend on the guitar as well. I've had guitars with compensated saddles on which the B string was NEVER quite in tune, always do under either sharp as a fretted string, or flat as aN open string....and others that it simply was not an issue. I don't recall any of the guitars I've had without a compensated saddle.

[charles Tauber]

People - musicians, scientists, mathematicians and instrument makers - have been struggling with getting instruments to play "in-tune" for a very long time, dating back to at least the time of Pythagorus and ancient Greece.

Having an instrument play "in-tune" has two components to it. The first is what pitches you want to hear. That is referred to as temperament. The second is how closely you can get an instrument (or voice) to achieve those pitches. That is referred to as intonation.

I'll leave aside the issue of temperament - what pitches we want to hear as "in-tune" and focus on intonation of fretted string instruments. Lute makers, principally in the 1600's and 1700's, tried every trick in the book to adjust the intonation on a lute. They tried moving frets around, they tried nut compensation, they tried bridge compensation.

What was learned by lute makers was not lost or forgotten by other fretted string instrument makers, such as guitar makers. The simplest and coarsest way to improve intonation on a fixed-fret string instrument is to move the bridge - saddle for most guitars - a little so that the vibrating string length is slightly longer than theory predicts. This added length is known as "compensation". Every modern guitar has the saddle moved from its theoretical location to make the vibrating string length longer.

Instrument makers have known for centuries that different strings require a different amount of compensation to make the intonation of each string as good as it can be. That is, each different string - longer/shorter, thicker/thinner, higher pitch/lower pitch - requires its own amount of compensation. Thus, the next simplest method to further improve intonation is to slant a straight saddle to provide progressively more compensation, the thicker/more massive each string gets. On most guitars, this is a closer approximation of accurate intonation. For many players - and listeners - this is "close enough".

For players that demand better intonation than that, the next closer approximation to accurate intonation is to address the most inacurate intonation, the B string on steel string acoustic guitars, the G string on nylon string guitars, and, often the unwound G string on electric guitars. These strings do not lie on the straight-line approximation that a straight, slanted saddle provides. The result is that they don't play in tune well. To improve that string, manufacturers have introduced a slanted saddle that has the breaking point of the one string off of the straight-line approximation. By having the breaking point further back than the two adjacent strings, that vibrating string length is lengthened and plays more closely in tune. Again, for many players and listeners, that is sufficiently close to "in-tune".

For those wanting even better intonation, instead of using a straight-line approximation of where each string should break over the saddle, the breaking point of each string is placed where it provides the best intonation for that string and its specific length, pitch and mass. Doing so provides a step closer to achieving the desired pitches and is sufficiently close for all but the most discerning players and listeners.

For those wanting to be even closer to the desired pitches, a combination of both nut and saddle compensation can be used. The first approximation is to move the entire nut - and all of the strings' breaking points - closer to the first fret. Many guitars have that built into the manufacture of the guitar, moving the nut about .015" closer to the first fret than its theoretical position. For those wanting better intonation than that, like compensating the saddle for individual strings, one compensates the nut for individual strings. A "fully" compensated nut has each string breaking over the nut at a different position.

It is relatively easy to measure the intonation of a guitar. Using an electronic tuner calibrated in "cents" - 1/100th of a semi-tone - one can play each note and record how closely it adheres to the desired pitch - as determined by the temperament that one is using. One can then observe the effect that the above steps have on the intonation of the instrument and implement them accordingly to get increasingly more accurate intonation.

[Lee Callicutt]

Funny you should mention this topic, as this is the second time and instrument I've chosen the low action/uncompensated saddle relationship over a relatively higher action and fully compensated saddle with great satisfaction with the resulting intonation.

I've had this particular guitar for a number of years, and liked it, but always had the nagging feeling it wasn't the instrument it could be. It came from the factory with a compensated B saddle. Not bad, but not great either. I made a couple of fully compensated bone saddles and it seemed marginally better, but still seemed "finicky" and "fussy" in its tuneability, for lack of a better description. I finally settled on a fully compensated Tusq saddle and took it down as low as possible without buzzing as an experiment. Better, but still finicky to my ear. All the while thinking about another guitar I had taken down into low action territory with a straightforward, uncompensated bone saddle with great success, so I finally gave in and made one for this guitar as well, and I couldn't be more satisfied.

Bear in mind that I have multiple acoustics that are quite happy with fully compensated saddles. But I also one that is exceedingly happy with a plain old uncompensated saddle.

I think it's important to remember that the angle of the saddle slot is already compensated, and sometimes that's all that's needed if you're not fretting sharp with string action that is too high.

As always, YMMV.

[Authentic]

Originally Posted by charles Tauber

For players that demand better intonation than that, the next closer approximation to accurate intonation is to address the most inacurate intonation, the B string on steel string acoustic guitars, the G string on nylon string guitars, and, often the unwound G string on electric guitars. These strings do not lie on the straight-line approximation that a straight, slanted saddle provides.

Do you know why this is? Thanks for your wealth of knowledge and experience.

[M Hayden]

Compensated saddles - by which I mean the more-or-less standard comp of 1st string towards soundhole, 2nd string towards back of bridge, and then a line from 3rd at front to 6th at back - seem to provide more accurate notes in more tunings. That said, non-compensated saddles on instruments like an old D-28 do bring a particular sound that some players like.

I prefer compensated, but that's not necessarily 'right,' just preference. Try both and decide what YOU like.

[charles Tauber]

Originally Posted by Authentic

Do you know why this is?

It's pretty common knowledge. The B string is a larger diameter than either the E string or the core of the G string. The larger diameter requires more compensation that the two neighbouring thinner strings.

An unwound steel G string has a larger diameter than either neighbouring strings. Ditto for nylon G strings that are not wound.

[Alan Carruth]

Thanks the Charles Tauber for the best short explanation I've seen yet. Naturally, when you go for brevity it's hard to be as complete as you'd like, so I'm going to address 'Authentic's' question. Sadly, I won't be as brief as Charles was.

The main thing we're compensating for when we move the saddle and nut is the way the strings stretch when you fret them. Pushing the string down makes it a bit longer, so the tension rises, and with it, the pitch. As it happens, for a given string the amount the tension rises is determined by how much longer it gets, and not by how much tension there was on it to begin with. The main variables I that equation are the Young's modulus of the string/core material, and the cross section area of the string/core. Young's modulus is just a measure of how hard it is to stretch a piece of material of a given size, and, of course, it's harder to stretch a fatter string.

Steel string sets use plain steel for both the high E and B strings. The Young's modulus is the same for both, but the B string is fatter. Thus the B string is harder to stretch, and it's tension rises more than the E string when you fret it. Since they both start out with pretty much the same tension the pitch of the B rises more, and it needs more compensation.

It's a matter of some discussion among the experts whether string stiffness plays a part in this. Certainly it's the stiffer strings that usually need more compensation, so it does seem an obvious relationship. The problem is that the stiffness of a string of a given material goes as the fourth power of the string/core diameter. That makes the B string something like 2-1/2 times as stiff as the E. That's pretty noticeable, and maybe easier to relate to than stretch.

The problem is that at least some of the people who have worked out the math on this find that string stretch pretty well accounts for intonation problems without the need to factor in stiffness. It's also a little hard to see how stiffness works in this case.

'Perfect' intonation on any guitar is probably impossible. After all, you don't always press down on the strings in exactly the same way. There are lots of other variables in there as well. The upshot is that, although you can get 'arbitrarily close' with some care, there are always going to be some notes and intervals that are just 'out'. Some of this has to do with the elephant in the room, temperament, but there's enough left over to keep many debates alive. I've seen more than one such exchange expire of exhaustion this year alone, with no resolution.

[charles Tauber]

As always, Alan, an excellent addition.

[Alex6strings]

i just learnt more in 5 minutes than I have for a long time. And good stuff, guitar stuff. Thanks to the last page or of posters, Charles, Alan, Von, Greg, etc. The knowledge you guys share is great. A wise guitar play once said, 'You're never smarter for not knowing something'.

Thanks for all this so far - and can anyone comment on when compensated saddles first appeared? I did wonder about Takamine and Lowden's split saddles, whether they might have come first?