Official Luthiers Forum!

If anyone would like a free .xls fret placement calculator I created just e-mail stuartgortsr@gmail.com and I'll send it to you.

You simply input the scale and it outputs the fret placements through 24 frets....both in stretch compensated positions and uncompensated positions. I believe the compensated position would be particularly useful for acoustic guitars.

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I read Emerson on the can. A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds...true...but a consistent reading of Emerson has its uses nevertheless.

StuMusic

For those of you who relied on the "old" Stewmac fret placement calculator, it seems that the new version has been updated with the former functionality, including saddle compensation placement.

I ran a comparison with my calculator (linked a few messages earlier in this thread) and confirmed that both continue to give the same compensation results for acoustic guitars.

BTW: one OLF member has contacted me who's experienced problems opening my calculator in Excel 2003/OS-X and in Numbers for iPad. I can't reproduce the problem, so wondering if anyone else has run into similar problems?

It seems to be working exactly as before

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Michael F Smith
Goat Rock Ukulele
http://goatrockukulele.com

I'm glad it is back. I few months ago I was curious as to how they were calculating the saddle compensation. I ran a bunch of numbers through it and I think I stumbled on to the formula that they use. What they seem to have done is set the main compensation based on a 25.0 inch scale length and then added 1/8" to that. That is for the center of the saddle. They then angled the saddle 3 degrees. I think that it is 3 degrees. I can't find my notes to double check.

They then scaled the compensation based on the scale length. That gives us the following formulas:

Steel String Acoustic
Low E compensation: Scale Length * 1.0084
High E compensation: Scale Length * 1.0035

Classical
Center of saddle compensation: Scale Length * .1003

As other posters have said, this formula gives a pretty general starting point but the number may change depending on string gauge and action so YMMV.