Official Luthiers Forum!

OK, I am adding electronics to this build and the unit I bought is an under saddle bar that connects to an equilizer. The bar is quite thick compared to Martins thin line model. I scraped the bottom of the bridge to get a little more depth, almost to the point that I am going to go through if I go any more. Now with the pickup in place, the saddle will only have 1/8" in the bridge. It seems to be a nice tight fit but not the traditional approach of having half the saddle buried below.

I will probably continue on and see how it works out but thinking I may have to make a new bridge with a slightly higher radius where the saddle fits in.

Good news is the bridge is not glued up yet, bolted it down with the Stew Mac bridge bolts so I can make adjustments if needed.

Any thoughts? Maybe I should just go out and buy a thin line and trash this one but hate to waste the money

you may have to route your saddle slot a bit deeper. this is necessary with most us pickups. and the routing should be done on a glued on bridge to ensure that the slot has a flat bottom. otherwise your may well end up with uneven transduction from string to string.crazymanmichael38659.5782523148

As Michael said, I cut the saddle slot while it's glued on if I'm going to install an under-saddle pickup. That's important, unless you have the bottom of the bridge curved to perfectly match the top before gluing it. But, I think that 1/8" of saddle in the bridge is probably fine. At least according to what one of the Fishman techs told me a couple years back.

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"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

i like to have more saddle in the bridge than above it. while the 1/8" may be enough for the pickup, i would want more in the slot.

I did want more meat of the saddle inside the bridge, not really happy with it and I think I have removed as much of the based of the bridge as possible.

What if I added to the bottom of the bridge with a thin piece of wood and then I could go deeper with the saddle pickup??

CrazyMM, while I agree with you in desiring to have more saddle in there, the Fishman technician advised against it, siting that the deeper slot can cause more contact issues. He claims that the shallower slot makes for better transmission into the pickup. I figure they know what they are talking about. That said, I've had more than 1/8" before with fine results.

_________________
"I want to know what kind of pickups Vince Gill uses in his Tele, because if I had those, as good of a player as I am, I'm sure I could make it sound like that.
Only badly."

Thanks Don

Well based on a couple of posts I have on this same guitar I think I will string it up fretless, play with the action and back bow issue and work out the saddle pickup in the process. Appreciate all the feedback from all of you.