Saddle slant's influence as per intonation?

[Bax Burgess]

Are nylon strings less influenced by the angle of the bridge slot, and also saddle top shaping, than steel strings?

[mc1]

it strikes me as a creative way to overcome an incorrectly placed saddle - slant the saddle.

[Bax Burgess]

I'd love to flip a lefty classical to a righty - swap the nut - but this particular guitar has a slanted lefty slot, so that may not lead to a satisfactory result, especially since I do like using the higher notes.

[Alan Carruth]

The amount of 'compensation' you need at the saddle end depends a lot on the Young's modulus of the string: how stretchy the material is. Steel is harder to stretch than nylon or gut, so it needs more compensation. Gut strung guitars typically got by with a saddle that went straight across, but when they switched over to steel strings the makers found that they had to slant the saddle to get the intonation to be close. These days even Classical players are getting a lot more fussy about intonation, and are insisting that the makers build it in.

[Bax Burgess]

Thanks, Alan.

[rick-slo]

Originally Posted by Bax Burgess

Are nylon strings less influenced by the angle of the bridge slot, and also saddle top shaping, than steel strings?

Nylon strings being much less stiff have much less increase in inharmonicity as the string gauge (mainly the core gauge rather than the total gauge (core + windings)) increases. Thus the saddle slot can be at ninety degrees to the fretboard while with a steel string guitar the saddle slot must be angled.
Some information on inharmonicity here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inharmonicity

[Bax Burgess]

All of this info gives me enough hope to make the switch to righthanded stringing. String selection may play a part, though, I'll consider modifying/widening the bridge slot for finer intonation.

[Bruce Sexauer]

On a typical nylon strung guitar, there is only action height to deal with in changing from righty to lefty. As the instrument becomes more sophisticated there is subtle adjustment for intonation, nut slot width, and the possibility that the geometry of the fingerboard has been "optimized" as I actually do to make the string height from the top equidistant despite the action differential between high and low strings. Switching one of my recent nylon guitars to a lefty would likely affect the balance to its detriment. This would be true of an early Ramirez as well, but it is not all that common so you are probably safe.

[Bax Burgess]

Thanks, Bruce. All these bits of information form a general sense of where I'm likely to end up in this exercise - an end result born of reasonable expectation.