Official Luthiers Forum!

How do you prefer to set the angle of your saddle slot? Do you calculate the angle? Measure the slope over a certain distance (1/8" over 3" per Cumpiano)? Or some other method?

_________________
ELEVATE || Next Level Lutherie
http://elevatelutherie.com
&
http://ensorguitars.com

Martin uses a 3 degree angle gibson used under 4 over 3 I find the 3 degree angle with a .1 saddle slot will afford you ample adjustment for intonation compensation I have actually set guitar bridges unslotted and with a drill blank set the strings for the best intonation , that is were I found the slightly wider saddle on a 3 degree angle works pretty well.
I also use .1 compensation length based off the first string and 2.25 on the the bass . So in a nutshell the bass is 1/8 inch longer than the treble.

_________________
John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

Mine is a 4mm offset measured at the e strings…

I never actually made use of an angle for positioning the bridge slots of steel string acoustic guitars (there seem to be a lot of different conventions used), relying on the compensation calculations from the Fretted Instrument Bridge Saddle Compensation Calculator https://www.liutaiomottola.com/formulae/compensation.htm on my website, or the plan detail as generated by "G" Thang https://www.liutaiomottola.com/formulae/gthang.htm. So I was curious about this as well. Looking at the output of those tools for a conventional steel string acoustic guitar with typical action and string set, the angle comes in at exactly 3 degrees.

_________________
R.M. Mottola
LiutaioMottola.com

Author of the books Building the Steel String Acoustic Guitar and Mottola's Cyclopedic Dictionary of Lutherie Terms.

I don't check in here very often. If you need to contact me the best bet is via email through the contact page on my site.

Always a 1/8” drop back over three inches. With a 1/8” saddle I have never had problems getting good intonation points.
I’ll have to measure the angle.

_________________
It's not what you don't know that hurts you, it's what you do know that's wrong.

numbers....

1/8" tilt divided by spacing of let's say 2 1/4" = .055555556

take the arc tangent of that and the angle = 3.18*

2 5/16" spacing gives 3.09*

hey, just call it a nice even 3*

over a 3" run you get 2.39*

3 degrees.