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A friend of mine has bought a new Martin OM-28v and it has a glued long through saddle. I heard of old vintage models with glued long saddles, but I thought that the new guitars inspired to those instruments were modern interpretations.
What is the real utility of a glued saddle?

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What is the real utility of a glued saddle? To hold it in place and to provide better coupling to the bridge. They sound better when they're glued. I'm not trying to make a case for it, as I'm quite OK with drop-in saddles. But back when through-saddles were more common, and people had replaced them with unglued and often badly fitted replacements, you could easily discern the difference. 

 

I think one reason for the faux through-saddle that actually drops in is to make it possible to put a transducer underneath it. You can't do that with a traditional glued (or unglued) through-saddle. 

A different point of view. Very interesting!
Thanks mr. Hostetter!

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Paul H. wrote: "But back when through-saddles were more common, and people had replaced them with unglued and often badly fitted replacements, you could easily discern the difference."

But the same can be said for "badly fitted replacements" of drop-in saddles, no?

To refine my original statement, no definitive comparison can be made between two instruments or the results of different design methods, ever.

To conduct a controlled experiment (the only method to determine definitive differences), both instruments would have to be exactly the same. Both tops would have to have identical grain with identical density, the saddles would have to be identical, etc. This cannot be done in the real world.

I maintain that it is impossible to go beyond general speculation when discussing these types of differences.  Add in humidity differences, strings, tuning machine weight, etc and it becomes clear that a clinical evaluation (or even a causal analysis) is moot.

Let me also clarify that a builder, through experience etc., can evaluate the probable results of a certain piece of wood (as in tap tuning a top), but each individual top must be tuned to itself, not to a different yet similar top. So I agree that while 'predictability' is a valid design goal but a true comparison is impossible.


These kinds of discussions, although academically liberating, are like arguing about who is a "better" guitarist?: B.B. King or Andreas Segovia? There are simply no answers to those kinds of questions.

My 2 cents,
Paul V.

I agree with you, no definitive comparison can be made between two instruments 'cause every guitar has unique characteristics, but sometime we can change a detail on a single instrument and valuate the results.
I presume it would possible realize how two different through-saddle, unglued and glued, affect the sound of a single guitar. (And we could repeat the same test on several guitars to have a "general" response).

My 2 euro-cents :)

Good theorizing!!!

While it may be possible to change the bridge/saddle on the same guitar in an attempt to make a direct comparison, there are several barriers to that process.

The utmost is the inability of the human brain to retain "audio (timbre and amplitude) details" for longer than a few minutes.  This is not speculation, but scientific fact.

Explained, that means: when you try one bridge/saddle method and record the results, even using lab grade audio recorders, your brain cannot remember the former sound long enough to make a valid comparison.  Also, major changes will have occurred in the instrument itself as one bridge is removed & the other glued.  You'd also have to account for the timbrel difference in string sets, as using the same strings would skew the results even further. The new bridge/saddle unit would have to match the density & weight of the comparison piece, etc.  What cannot be repeated is the uniformity of the conditions.

One more factor overlooked by many guitar guys is a fact well-known to audio engineers and hi-fi folks:  If one unit displays an increase of amplitude (if one is louder than the other), the "louder" of the two will always be declared the winner by the untrained ear, regardless of its tonal qualities. 

This is best demonstrated by setting up two sets of loudspeakers.

One set should be of exceptionally fine quality in it's response & polar pattern [a 'reference model'], even to the point of using advanced speaker management programs to make their response "flat" in the room.  The other set of speakers should be "economy" models. No response EQ required. 

Using the same electronics and input source, compare the two. 

IF the acoustic output of both systems are calibrated to be the same [they both play at identical volumes], most listeners will pick the better speaker as the best sounding speaker. 

Alternately, if the economy speakers are calibrated to be even 3 db louder than the reference speakers, the cheap speaker will always be judged the winner, even though its dynamics, frequency bandwidth and polar responses are far inferior to the reference speaker.  Summary: The mind will always perceive "louder" as "better", regardless of other vitally important properties.

See where I'm going with this?  I'll bow out of this now as it's become more of an academic discussion that can yield no practical real world results.  Besides, I feel like I'm back in Physics class" in the '70's(-:

But micro, I greatly respect & encourage your curiosity.  It's the kind of 'wondering' that often creates great solutions to long standing problems. May your imagination guide you to success(-:

The worst result of successful experimentation in this vein, would be the ability for all guitars to be built to sound exactly the same, and that, would be the ultimate tragedy.

Have a GREAT week il mi amico,

Paul (-:

Paul H. wrote: "But back when through-saddles were more common, and people had replaced them with unglued and often badly fitted replacements, you could easily discern the difference."

But the same can be said for "badly fitted replacements" of drop-in saddles, no?

Of course, but the real comparison is with even well-fitted (formerly) glued-in thru-saddles. They're the ones that don't sound so good, and they're the ones I was talking about, in hopes of keeping this thread focused on the OP. 

To refine my original statement, no definitive comparison can be made between two instruments or the results of different design methods, ever.

Right, but where you can make educated analyses is with large numbers of the same basic instruments. That's why I like to refer to mass produced factory items like Martins and Gibsons—there are zillions of LG-2s, J-45's, D-18s, 000-28's etc. No two are alike, but a deep sameness emerges after a few decades of working on lots of the same basic instruments. Forget about comparing two instruments. Analyze hundreds or thousands. 

"Summary: The mind will always perceive "louder" as "better", regardless of other vitally important properties."


If we all have the same mind. Then louder is better.  Awesome!

Easy on the volume Tom, think of that poor little speaker.

I'm with Paul H. if only we could all get the opportunity to play thousands of guitars endlessly.......... oops, and then I awoke. LOL  

"Forget about comparing two instruments. Analyze hundreds or thousands."

I agree Paul.  And as we do that throughout our careers, I think the best description of their variances in sound we could come up with is: "They're ALL different from one another."

And....as I tell my customers, when subjects have reached a reasonable conclusion:

"Regardless of how it plays or sounds, it's the MUSIC that's made with it that is the most important element."

May we all have a GREAT WEEK, eh?

Paul V. (-:

I don't agree that all you can conclude is that they all sound different from one another. It's too easy a way to dismiss some important factors in sound without looking deep enough. If a guitar is playing at 80% of its potential because the saddle is fitted badly, do you just write it off as "what it is" and just different? I don't. After so many decades at the bench and in front of an audience, I can hear that sort of thing and deal with it.

It's true that even if every instrument were playing at 100%, they would each still sound a little different. But there are distinct factors that can and often must be evaluated and addressed.

Hostetter wrote: "in hopes of keeping this thread focused on the OP". And I'm very interested in OP! :-)
(but sincerely I thank you guys, very instructive debate!)

Mr. Hostetter, you gave me a clear and convincing explanation for the faux through-saddle. I have one in my triple-O and when I said to my luthier that it could have been glued, he was very doubtful about it (and in fact it wasn't), but he didn't tell me why. Now I know!

I still haven't clear the role of the glue in a real thru-saddle.
Isn't a correct break angle enough to keep in place a thru-saddle?
I guess the glue assures a more strong joint with the bridge, but not least you said a glued thru-saddle sounds better. So why don't glue every saddle? Does a well fitted drop-in saddles make the same good work?

I admit that I fell head first into this academic exercise.  I'm calling myself a fool for that.

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