"Double wide" saddles for 60s 70s Gibsons
 

A really cool 68 country western came across my bench today and I realize I didn't take a pic of the saddle, but apparently the previous owner had the tone sucking adjustable saddle replaced with a double wide compensated saddle as wide as the original adjustable saddle. It had decent tone but the top had not been grafted where the holes had been drilled for the saddle screws. Has anyone done this and compared the tone versus a 1/8" saddle or similar?

I suppose you could make a wide saddle then do a recording of the guitar and then fill it and rout for a 1/8th saddle and compare recordings but I'm not sure it would yield any real results. I prefer to go the wide saddle route when fixing those guitars as you can get spot on intonation with the wide saddle and in that respect it could possibly sound a lot better then a 1/8th saddle.

Yep I had my luthier make me a double wide bone saddle to replace the wooden adjustable saddle in my 66 J-50 ADJ.
It didn’t make a big noticeable difference to my ear. (YMMV)
He then he pulled out an old Gibson ceramic ADJ saddle from his old parts box… and Bingo! Made a big difference! Louder, brighter with more overtones & projection….on the other hand the guitar lost a lot of its woody warmth..

So does it sound better?
Hard to say “Different is easy better is much harder and subjective!”
I guess it depends on your taste if you think the tone is too dark or lacking in the mids and highs then its big improvement.

I still have the custom bone & the original rosewood saddles.
I use the ceramic saddle most of the time but occasionally I will switch back to the rosewood for recording if I want a darker woodier tone.

Hope this helps
TWM

I have a '67 J45 and a '68 Hummingbird with adjustable saddles. What has worked well for me is replacing the original rosewood insert with a Tusc replacement and tweaking it a bit.

I first measure the height of the bridge off the soundboard with the guitar set up to my preferred action. Then I measure the height of the Tusc insert. I figure out the difference between the setup height and the height of the insert - let's say 1/16" difference for this example. I then make a 1/16" thick piece of rosewood the width of the saddle that will be the length of the bridge minus the space needed for the adjustment screws. Little dab of glue on the wood and glue it to the bottom of the insert.

Hard to envision and I don't have pics, but here is the end result. I now put the insert back in and screw it snugly to the top. Now my action is right where it was before and I have full saddle contact with the top. The guitars sound much more open and full (better) to my ear and the mod is easily reversable and keeps the piece entirely original. John