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I have been doing this a long time. Over 25 yr. Here is what I can share about setting up a bridge/saddle location

A the most important thing is to identify the variables you are working with

So what are they?

First and foremost is the set up your planning to use. After all a set up for a finger picker is different than for a flat picker.

action height is the other variable , string gauge , top movement etc. Saddle width, neck relief.


I hate using jigs for this task I prefer to use a 36 in scale. ( nice way to say expensive yard stick )


So what is the best way ???

If you don't know how to figure scale length you will know to measure nut to 12th fret times 2 , so no matter what your using , Martin scale, gibson etc it is still the same,

so X represents scale length.

no you have to work some compensation length , so in a way , your working scale length ( static dimension ) to working string length ( dynamic dimension ) this is always changing and can be seen as you do tuning,

so what you want to do is plan in for this adjustment in the saddle so you can ( COMPENSATE) the saddle to get the best intonation per string.

No guitar is spot on the day you string it up. The top settles in , the bridge will rotate and thus the saddle location changes under the stress of the strings from a non stressed condition.

So with this all thrown at you , I found that a good compensation length is about .10 of an inch set to the center of the saddle slot. So if your building a Dred for a flat picker , you may move this point closer to the front of the saddle slot.

so with all of this , I know if I tune up the guitar after my adjustments , on the day I set this up I like to see about 2 cents flat. Then as the top settles in and the bridge torques forward, I should see the saddle roll forward and after about 2 to 3 weeks I can then make my compensation adjustment to the saddle. The guitar will never go flat to the set up created as the action height will rise through age causing things to go sharp , relief goes up again cause sharpness , so you can adjust all this in and make a very tight intonation on a guitar. Its all in the understanding of the physics of what moves and how.

So if you plan that you know you need to work in some movement on the saddle , the final tweaks can be made by intonation adjustments in the saddle as it falls into its final location as the guitar accepts the applies stress. Also know that RH will cause movement but that is a variable that comes and goes so try and set up the guitar for the condition it will be living in, Fla will get a bit different set up that one guitar to Arizona.

_________________
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

Wow, a lot of venom in a public space.

I was ready to high five this guy at the start of the video during his diatribe about misinformation on the web. Then I was ready to Pile on with criticism when he became the very thing he railed about.

Incorrect is incorrect but the venom I don't think is helpful. I see a fair amount of the same venom in this thread.

Aren't most of us proclaiming him not just wrong but a liar?

I got a response like woody just before comments were turned off reiterating that Martin told him the saddle position was correct.

I suspect he may not be telling the truth or at least misunderstanding Communication from Martin but do I know that?
No.

Does Martin bear any responsibility? They are hardly infallible. After all, they misplace a crap-ton of saddles and ask warranty service people to jump through hoops for the privilege of using their name as evidence of competence. Shouldn't they actually do that if they say they do?

With all due respect, like most on this forum, I could walk outside, grab a stick, put a nick in it with my thumbnail, hold it to that guitar and know what I was likely looking at. A 70's Martin with a misplaced bridge. Probably a hollow tube truss rod with too much relief in the neck that needs correcting, and a neck reset as well.

Should we really criticize a Luthier based on his tools?

I have a good friend who could build a pretty mean D-45 style Instrument with little more than a band saw, laminate trimmer, pencil, and a chisel.
He has a waiting list and the saddles are even in the right position.

Does Martin really only warranty the misplaced bridges to the original owner? Why? I suspect many of them have gotten rid of the instrument because it never sounded quit right as you played up the neck.

I've been using the same method as John for many years now. When I started I think I learned to compensate 3/32d but later found that .10in measured down the center line with a 1/8in saddle pretty much solved it. Of course you have to have the saddle angle right too and I have been using the same jig, which IIRC I got right out of Cumpiano's book, for almost 30 years and 75 guitars now. I would agree with Hesh when many times he says that the nut has to be tuned perfectly as part of the equation that is compensation. Maybe it's not nice to pile on a guy like that but at the same time he is plain and simply wrong and that does at least need to be pointed out.

when you proclaim yourself a Master , and you post wrong information you will have to accept your not a master.

_________________
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

By the second page of this thread I was sorry I posted in and went back to see if I could delete my post.

Everyone has a bad day and some folks have two.

I don't know this person and have never heard of their business but I was sorry at how this thread developed. There is a LOT of false information out here more than you may think that you know. What's important to me is that everyone gets to go home at night and making a mistake does not a lousy person, luthier, whatever make.

I made a mistake once.... Anyway locating a bridge or more specifically in my world the saddle... correctly is just one of 10,000+ things that professional meaning working in the trade luthiers have to know to do our Jobs. You would be very surprised what a small subset.... of the knowledge required to be a working in the trade luthier guitar building encompasses. I would guess that what you need to know to build a guitar is 10% or less of what you need to know to work on any guitar, bass, mando or banjo that comes your way. The amount of knowledge required to successfully work on hundreds of different types of guitars, dozens of major makers and all manner of unusual requests that players may make to deal with their goals is far more than I ever thought it would be.

So again everyone has a bad day. I was disappointed to see how mean spirited some of the posts actually are. It reminded me of why there is a noticeable and enduring absence of working in the trade luthiers participating on this forum. Those folks are smarter than I am apparently.

It's supposed to be fun folks.

Thanks

That wasn’t a bad day. It was someone stubbornly holding onto ignorance and deleting comments from people with obviously better information than he had. The bottom line is he is an embarrassment to our trade. Everyone makes mistakes but one MUST be able to learn from them.

That “Master Luthier” is the equivalent of a flat earther and he deserves to be called out.

his bad day started when he decided to start a youtube channel to spout his junk so he could make some money...

after 40+ years in the trades I'm MORE than fed up with idiots proclaiming their "brilliance" (when it's actually their retardedness)

to err is human, that is correct

to double down on it as this character has is another thing completely

Thank you for saying this.

As Hesh points out it is about the information , it needs to be accurate. I assume he thinks he was correct , but he wasn't, and by turning off the comments , he should have realized that maybe he needed to rethink the information he had. I hope he takes it down and does a correct video on how to figure out how to place a saddle.

_________________
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

I am fated to laugh at people referring to themselves as masters of this or that. Yes, I try to at least laugh with them, but it is nearly impossible for someone to claim they are a master of some science, craft, or artform without my child-brain, which is to say the part of my brain that still laughs at poop jokes and bad sexual puns, imagines they just told me they are serial Onanists bent on coercing me into suffering their company. How did this happen?

I suppose we all had that group of friends in our teens that we hung out with, usually comprised of our BFF's, our bestie's friends we tolerated, and at least one of those weird/annoying people that attaches themselves to the group through main force and to partially remedy an inability to obtain female companionship of the three-dimensional variety otherwise. In our group of teens struggling through a West Virginia rural adolescence, this last was a boy named Ernie who with sticker burr-like persistence just simply kept showing up and therefore became a de facto member of the group.

Summers in my part of the state were both long and hot, so a gathering at the river to fish, swim, and consume wine coolers and beers obtained by older siblings or through corner store connections was not uncommon. On one such early summer evening, flush with the dual accomplishments of having placed a fresh worm on Sarah J.s waiting hook and consuming most of a twelve-pack of warm PBR, Ernie wobbled to his feet and announced that he was available to assist any of the young ladies present with the deed. With too much alcohol in his system and absolutely no sense of his impending doom, Ernie took the scattered giggles received from the group as warm approval, so thus emotionally fortified, launched into a speech that still makes me cringe. While I could likely still recount it word for word, the spirit of the thing might be better captured by imagining something along the lines of the Bryan Mills character's initial discussion with the Marko character from the film 'Taken.'

"I don't know whether you have a boyfriend. I don't know what that boyfriend might do to me in the morning when he finds out I talked to you. I don't know what you want or how to encourage you girls to go skinny-dipping and let me watch. If you are looking for help with your homework, I can tell you I won't be of much use there. But what I do have are a very particular set of skills, skills I have acquired over a very short career assisting my eight sisters and mother - all avid anglers. Skills that make me a god-send for people like you. If you let me bait your hook, ladies, that will be the end of it. I will not look for you, I will not pursue you. But if you don't, I will look for you, I will find you, and I will annoy you."

At the conclusion of Ernie's soliloquy, John O. - Mr. Cool (who is 320 lbs at last sighting and did not retain any of that long, thick, flowing mane beyond the second year of college) - briefly roused himself from his beer-induced stupor and joined the conversation.

"So let me get this straight, Ernie: you are a master of baiting, right?"

Ernie, never the sharpest of intellects, and hampered by a rather elevated blood alcohol level, answered in the affirmative.

"So you really want all the ladies here to know you are the one and only Master of Baiting present?"

I will spare the reader the culminating act of idiocy.

Ernie never saw the metaphorical approaching bus and again confirmed his mastery in the poorest of word choices, briskly stepping off the curb and into high school legend. Hilarity did ensue and Ernie never did get to see us girls peel and swim in the blue dusk (we did, fortified with Bartles and Jaymes' finest, but Ernie was off in the bushes heaving up a dinner of Milwaukee's Blue Ribbon beer). And for the next two years of the aggressive hazing ritual we euphemistically referred to as high school, anytime Ernie entered a room - whether school, party, or the feed and hardware store, someone would honor his expertise by greeting 'The Master.' People that has no idea why Ernie elicited that honor nonetheless still sang out with the greeting. For all I know, Ernie will be piped into my 45th reunion with a rousing chorus of "The MASTER!!! The Master is IN DA HOUSE!!!"

So... I could not help myself... by the time my mother would let me date, I was already giggling uncontrollably when someone used THAT word in a sentence. Watching Mr. Master Luthier's videos produced a near autonomic nervous system response for me. I know it is wrong, but we all are victims in one way or another of our formative years. May God have patience with me and my classmates come Judgement Day.

_________________
For the times they are a changin'

- Bob Dylan

Thanks Woodie!

I'm not at all sorry to forever more associate "Master Luthier" with "Master Baiter" in my mind.