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So, my friend Ray came over today, and we went to work on his Martin D-41. The intonation on the 6th string was pretty terrible - at the 12th fret, it played 10% sharp.

What we ended up doing was making a new saddle with a notch in it, and turning a bone pin to act as a saddle and pin combination.

It now intonates almost perfectly. He can capo and it stays in tune, even at the 9th fret. harmonics and fretted notes at the 12th fret are about .5% different now, very slightly flat. If I was to do this again, I'd make sure to leave plenty of meat on the pin so that we could dial in the intonation perfectly, but this is a major, major improvement. Watching him barre chords all the way up the neck without any problem was wonderful. There was no loss of tone, and we didn't have to make any changes to the bridge at all. The string is in very solidly, with no appearance of slipping out.

Thanks everyone for bouncing some good ideas around. Ray is giddy with excitement now that his guitar FINALLY plays in tune.

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I love it!!!!!!

VERY creative....and it looks GREAT too.

Nice work & superior problem solving Mark!!!!!

Half credit to Ray, and half to me, and major credit to Paul Hostetter and his website for explaining the problem clearly.

Nice!

That's pretty cool! 

  One thing... well two things, maybe three.

  One's a question;  Is this the only string that is this far out?

  Two's an concern; The bridge pins on my guitars are only finger tight. I don't force them into the holes much more than enough to keep them from falling out. I am somewhat concerned that the downward/forward pressure on this tapered pin, particularly if there were more than one, could cause the bridge to split. 

  Along that same line, are you figuring to remove the pin for string changes or do you intend to thread it through without removing the pin? 

 

1. Yes, the other strings are pretty well compensated by the saddle, not perfect, but well enough. The E was really obvious, though - Ray uses a pretty high saddle, and combined with the inexact saddle placement, it was really painful. He plays a lot of interesting voicings as well, and capos fairly high up when needed. (He looked into the Buzz Feiten system, but that system does not work with a capo.)

2. It's not forced in - the pressure is somewhat downward, somewhat forward, but no more than the pressure of a string bearing on the ebony already. The pin pops out quite easily when the string is loose, and it pulls out normally. We did make sure to make the pin correctly tapered so that the contact area is maximized. We were also really fortunate in that the thicker string windings don't actually project above the pin. There is a nice gentle curve up to the "saddle point" on the pin, so there is hardly a kink at all. Unlike the bridge slot, we are using the entire height of the bridge as well as the top and the bridge plate to hold this in - I'm really confident it won't break. I might ponder doing this with all six strings, but one seems to be no problem. Also, Ray is usually in dropped D tuning, so there is a touch less pressure there.

And, of course, we can always just put the old saddle and pin back in. :)

Nice job Mark. This goes in the file for future reference.

That "I might ponder" should read "I would probably balk at doing this with all six strings".

Thanks for the answers, Mark.  It sounds like you pretty much addressed my reservations. I've noticed on my guitars that a dropped D tuning messes with the intonation on that E string so I'm sure that it would only make a poorly intoned string worst. I was wondering why you only needed to move that one string that far back but I think I get it now. 

excellent...forget what I said about not doing this blahahahah!

Actually, you said to forget the hole in the pin, and I agreed with you! It got me thinking that I was getting too complicated with my strategy. Less complication = actually doing something, and probably better tone since I introduced less mass to the bridge than I might have otherwise.

This is also leading up to some ideas to make a better autoharp, which I think is the worst designed instrument ever. But that would be another discussion.

Nice Job!

Brilliant.....The elegant solution.  

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