Workshop: Correcting Intonation on '60s Gibson Adjustable Saddles
Note: this in an excerpt from a post about an Epi FT-110 that I'm updating and so I moved this information to a separate post...
Gibson almost always put the bridge in the wrong place in the '60s and so intonation is almost always off as you play up the neck. In the case of this guitar, it was out almost 1/8" too forward and so it played sharp. Here you can see the process of finding this out and modding the saddle to make it "right..."
Above: the "halfway" point on the scale (at the 12th fret) is roughly 12 11/16" and so you'd multiply this by two to get the break point of the high "E" string at the saddle.
As you can see above, here measuring from the 12th fret to the saddle the same distance, that break point is actually located right at the back of the saddle. This means that unless one replaces or modifies the saddle, it will play out of tune.
So, the first thing I do is remove the saddle, shave the "ridge" on the top of it off, and mark-out where I need to adjust the shape to cut it for proper compensation.
Above, you can see my rough job with a flat file to "lightning-bolt" the top edge for good intonation. In the case of this guitar, the compensation necessary pushes the break point that needs to be on the saddle almost to its back edge in many places.
...and here's what it looks like in place. It's not much different from "stock" at a glance, eh?
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