Not another stupid question - Part 2; string tension and intonation

thereshopeyet
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Sun Oct 07, 2012 6:45 am

Michelle, sounds like you gave that your best shot.
It would be interesting if Wrench had something else to add.

Dermot
:)


wrench
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Sun Oct 14, 2012 6:04 pm

Sorry it took me so long to get back here. I have very little spare time these days. Here are the photos I promised demonstrating the clearance I put on the back side of saddles.

EDIT: Crap! how do attach photos?

Michele, you are a courageous and skillful lady to experiment with these saddles. I think you need to look for no one more professional than yourself and perhaps a couple of improved tools to make an improved saddle. It sounds like you had some success experimenting, and I am very impressed with your efforts.

If you think you have an edge sharp enough to damage a string, you need only to break that edge with a very small file or my personal favorite saddle tool, the radiused notch in a utility knife blade.

Your observation of bone are pretty spot on, too. I find bone to offer the loudest and most fundamental response of the nut and saddle materials. TUSQ is equally dense and loud, but it passes some much higher frequencies than bone.

Guitar compensation and intonation is the most elusive science I know of. As far as I know, the only two people to achieve concrete science on the subject are Greg Byers (nylon string only) and Trevor Gore, who extended Byers' work to steel strings, and uses that information in his products. Incidentally, Gore is an Aussie. Many others have written papers on intonation, but they always contain the words approximation, estimated, and trial-and-error. And you took it on. Be proud.


thereshopeyet
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Sun Oct 14, 2012 9:21 pm

Wrench
That's an interesting post.
Michelle is sure brave.

Thanks.


michelew
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Mon Oct 15, 2012 12:50 am

wrench wrote:
Sorry it took me so long to get back here. I have very little spare time these days. Here are the photos I promised demonstrating the clearance I put on the back side of saddles.

EDIT: Crap! how do attach photos?

Michele, you are a courageous and skillful lady to experiment with these saddles. I think you need to look for no one more professional than yourself and perhaps a couple of improved tools to make an improved saddle. It sounds like you had some success experimenting, and I am very impressed with your efforts.

If you think you have an edge sharp enough to damage a string, you need only to break that edge with a very small file or my personal favorite saddle tool, the radiused notch in a utility knife blade.

Your observation of bone are pretty spot on, too. I find bone to offer the loudest and most fundamental response of the nut and saddle materials. TUSQ is equally dense and loud, but it passes some much higher frequencies than bone.

Guitar compensation and intonation is the most elusive science I know of. As far as I know, the only two people to achieve concrete science on the subject are Greg Byers (nylon string only) and Trevor Gore, who extended Byers' work to steel strings, and uses that information in his products. Incidentally, Gore is an Aussie. Many others have written papers on intonation, but they always contain the words approximation, estimated, and trial-and-error. And you took it on. Be proud.
Gee thanks Wrench :blush: :blush: :blush: :) it sure is nice to get encouragement for this sort of thing. I often think, "What are you doing? You're not a luthier. You don't know what you're doing. Give it to a professional.". But I do like to work out how things work and I find I understand things better when I get my hands dirty. I'm happy as a pig in muck when I'm doing hands-on stuff. I love wearing overalls and doing manual things generally....fiddling. :)

Actually, Sue recently told me about a ukulele making course that she saw advertised and basically said she thought I'd love it, which I would. However, living in an apartment without a shed (what's that about :)) and the necessary space for woodworking gear, and having a full time job, pretty much means that that won't happen in the foreseeable future. So I'll just ogle the beautiful ukuleles (and guitars of course) that others have made.

Well here are a couple of pictures so you can see what the experiment ended up looking like. The first is the whole step-dropped saddle (back) compared to the original one (front). The second is the ukulele strung with the new bone saddle.

Image

Image

Wrench, have you ever used ebony saddles? Do you have an opinion about how they sound?

Dermot - Thanks. You've just got to jump sometimes and hope you learn to fly before you hit the ground. Right? :)


thereshopeyet
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Mon Oct 15, 2012 2:38 am

Michelle Wrote:
Dermot - Thanks. You've just got to jump sometimes and hope you learn to fly before you hit the ground. Right?
:laugh: :laugh:


Image


michelew
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Tue Oct 16, 2012 2:33 am

Dermot, that's a BIG jump. Wow!


michelew
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Tue Oct 16, 2012 2:33 am

Double.


thereshopeyet
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Tue Oct 16, 2012 8:05 am

Thanks.


wrench
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Sun Oct 21, 2012 9:49 am

Thank you Dermot!!!! EDIT: still no photos for me. Maybe it has something to do with the fact I use Linux.

Michele, for all the secrets, knowledge, opinions, and fluffy words flying around the guitar world about saddle materials, it is simply the material's physical properties that matter to any significant degree. Density of the material - determines how much of the string energy gets passed onto the bridge. Stiffness - determines the natural frequency, and therefore which string overtones get passed onto the bridge. Bone and TUSQ have the same density, so either of them will maximize the volume. Bone has a natural frequency of about 1 kHz - just slightly above the the highest notes possible on a guitar. The natural frequency of TUSQ is nearly identical to bone up to 1 kHz, but it also has natural frequencies at reduced amplitudes up to 20 kHz. This gives TUSQ its brightness, and in some guitars this brightness approaches harshness. I find bone to be much friendlier than TUSQ to work with, and it has a slippery surface compared to TUSQ. If you have binding problems with TUSQ, powdered graphite usually clears it up. So why go into all this when you asked about ebony as a saddle material? So you can see the obvious comparisons of physical characteristics. Since it is a hardwood, and therefore softer and less dense than bone or TUSQ, ebony has a natural frequency of about 500 Hz, only about half that of the range of the guitar. This means you will get reduced response in higher registers. Specifically, you will notice a dropoff higher than about A5 (440 Hz). Ebony, or any wood, is fibrous, and has non-uniform regions of hardness. The fibers of grain are harder than the lignin and cellulose between the grain, therefore, your ebony saddle may not perform consistently from string to string. Were you to try one, however, it would indeed give a very mellow tone, possibly to a fault. Its life will be short, too, because of the soft and fibrous physical properties.

But I do not discourage you from trying it to see for yourself. It may be exactly what you are looking for, and you know how easy it is to make a saddle. And congratulations again on your successful experiment. Any experiment is successful when you learn anything, and the icing on the cake is when the experiment achieves the objective.


michelew
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Mon Oct 22, 2012 4:41 pm

Thanks Wrench that's really informative and it makes a lot of sense.

I'll try the ebony at some stage because I'm curious. :)

Thanks for dropping by and giving us your expert knowledge. I always learn something when you respond to a thread. You know your stuff.

Michele.


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