- 1). Remove the strings and the old saddle from the guitar. Put the guitar aside.
- 2). Place the old saddle against the blank for the new saddle and mark the blank for length. Leave a little extra material in place so it can be finished with the sandpaper. Cut off the extra length with the hacksaw.
- 3). Put the old saddle against the blank again and mark the height with the pencil. Cut off the extra height with the hack saw.
- 4). Remove the excess width from the saddle by sanding it with the coarse sand paper. Place the sandpaper on a flat surface and move the saddle back and forth across it. This will keep the pressure even and make sure the saddle stays the same width. Test fit the saddle to the slot by inserting both edges into the slot and sanding both sides as evenly as you can. Both ends should fit into the slot snugly.
- 5). Sand the ends of the bridge into curves that match the slot on the bridge. This can be done by gradually removing material from the ends and test fitting the saddle in the slot. It is not essential that the ends of the saddle fit perfectly within the edges of the slot on the bridge, so don't worry about taking off too much material.
- 6). Place the saddle in the slot on the bridge and use a pencil to mark an approximate curve across the top. You can also hold up the old saddle to get the curve from that, but make sure you leave extra material in the height so you can raise the height of the strings if you need to.
- 7). Mark the bottom of the saddle at the high E string end so you can remember how to re-position it. Start sanding off material at about a 45-degree angle on each of the top corners of the saddle until you get to the curve you marked. Once you have the desired curve lengthwise, use the fine sandpaper to turn the two 45-degree sands on the corner into a smooth curve widthwise across the saddle.
- 8). Use the fine sandpaper to slowly remove material so the contact points for the strings on the new saddle are the same as they were for the old one. Generally, this means you'll want to take off more material at the back than at the front of each string's contact point to get a higher pitch for the string. The exception to this is the B string, where more material should come from the front than from the back. The best guide to use is your old saddle.
- 9). Place the saddle back on the guitar, restring it and check the intonation by making sure the note from the open string matches the note at the 12th fret. If the notes don't match then adjust the curve over the top of the saddle until they do.
- 10
Check the distance between the strings and the fretboard. If they are too high then you can sand some material off the bottom of the saddle, which will make them lower. Always do this in small increments or you could lower them too far.
previous post