He had me when he pulled out the tape measure. I just use 2 hammer handles and a clod of dirt to get the intonation dead on.

people who refer to themselves as masters always make me raise my eyebrows...

Agreed completely, unless you're in certain European countries like Germany and Austria that have a master's test for luthiers to achieve the government endorsed title of "master" calling yourself a master luthier just seems so contrived and self aggrandizing. I've met a lot of truly exceptional builders and all of the best ones remain fairly humble about their work, the one's who have to preface their work with their self appointed title usually fall flat.

Funny timing on this one. I just had one of these on the bench. First one for me and I was not aware of the bridge placement issue from that era. I'll add that to the knowledge base!

The customer was having a hell of a time with intonation. He played around with six or eight new saddles himself trying to get it fixed. He even was super creative and created a saddle with an overhang behind the saddle slot to give himself a little more length. But complicating the matter was he had the action set super high with his experiments, so no matter what, he was going to be sharp. I ended up filling the slot and cutting a new one. New saddle with individually compensated strings. The new slot was just a hair behind the old one, so in the end, it was probably not even necessary and I could have just set up the guitar as is.

On a side note, even when I got the slot adjusted and saddle compensated, there was still "drift" (for lack of a better word) in the intonation on the low E. All the other strings were spot on, but the low E seemed to wander when fretted at the 12th. Usually spot on, but sometimes sharp (and no, I was not pressing down harder).

In the end the customer was super pleased, but it was likely due to the fact that I gave him the best setup he's ever had and the guitar played very easily.