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I tried to get cute and make a little tray with a bridge pin fixed on it and put the phone in the tray with some putty. Seems I'm always over-engineering.

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Oooh, fancy..!

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

+1 on the bubble level app for the phone. It works great.




I can't understand this do you happen to have a pic?

Oh wait... Rereading... So the bridge pin that is attaged to the tray replaces like the D-String pin and actually holds the string in?

Brilliant!

I'd still love to see a pic if ya got one.

In my experience players are often pretty married to a certain string gauge, at least on a per-instrument basis. They might use different gauges but it’ll be 13s on their dread and 12s on an OM, 9s on their strat etc. I don’t know many who jump back and forth regularly on the same instrument. Many are also brand-loyal as far as strings go too.

So I do usually set up to a specific gauge (and brand) of string.

I stuck a laser pointer to the bridge, and measured how far the spot on the wall moved. Long lever....

Apologies to Dave the OP but the issue of bridge rotation measurement is interesting.

Colin and Alan’s ideas both sound like a big improvement on previous techniques.

But I wanted to stress how useful the test is, however you do it.

After all the decisions about top thickness and bracing height etc, this is a properly objective measure of the stiffness of the soundboard plus bracing after the instrument has been put together. It can tell you if you overbuilt (which i along with most beginners probably do) and help with improving the next ones.

Dave

I use it as a check after I've finished a guitar.
In the Gore book he suggests this as a maximum rotation to guarantee survival of a braced top, so indicating maximum response of the soundboard.
I've now got enough of a handle on soundboard stiffness (Elong) and bracing heights/stiffness that I have hit this target on my last 3/4 builds.
I've also used this to shave braces on an overly stiff Taylor souindboard - bass notes just dreadfully dull, and could I help - found bridge rotaionj was 0.8 degrees!, thickensess sitka top ~3.2mm.
Owner was so pleased with the results, he was impressed enough to end up taking a guitar building course with me.
How to do it - strings at standard tuning, set inclinometer to zero bluetacked on the bridge, dump all tension, read rotation.
Just make sure to hold the body steady in some way, don't support it on the neck at all.
Hope that helps.

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The name catgut is confusing. There are two explanations for the mix up.

Catgut is an abbreviation of the word cattle gut. Gut strings are made from sheep or goat intestines, in the past even from horse, mule or donkey intestines.

Otherwise it could be from the word kitgut or kitstring. Kit meant fiddle, not kitten.

Thanks all for joining in the discussion.

It sounds like we all seem to have own methods and jigs the work for us.

Mine is a home made saddle matic. But I decided to improve it and make it more consistent, which is what prompted the OP.

I dug into the math and used the StewMac site, the Cumpianos and other texts and figure out an ‘standard’ from which to work. After 4 hours of tinkering and figuring I have settled on what I originally figured. About 2mm on the treble side and about 6mm on the bass.

So there you have it.

I’ll experiment with trimmin the nut end down on a future build and maybe revisit this post.

dl

Are you talking about the typical angle used for the slot? or the adjustment to the saddle once slot is cut?

My saddle angle is 4mm over 71mm...