Acoustic Action: How to lower a guitar saddle
As we've mentioned in the last post, lowering the action on most acoustic guitars is not just a matter of adjusting a couple of screws like we might on an electric. Nope. An acoustic generally requires us to remove the bridge saddle and shorten it. Removing material from the saddle lowers it, thereby lowering the action.
Last time, I outlined a trick to make this job a little more scientific and a little less scary. So, this time, we'll look at how to lower our saddle.
Mark the action adjustment on the saddle
I'm making the assumption that you've measured your current action and have used the geometry trick from the last post to determine how much saddle material to remove in order to achieve your target action.
A couple of side notes here:
First, if you don't have a target action, it's completely ok to work this by 'feel'. If you want to remove a little from the bottom of the saddle, re-tune to pitch and try it out, that's absolutely fine. Go for it. I'd recommend marking a straight line across the front of your saddle each time you begin to work at it, just so you can keep track of how much you're taking off each time.
Second — and more importantly — setting action isn't something that I recommend doing in isolation. By that, I mean that other factors can affect how an instrument's action appears. I definitely recommend addressing the neck relief and (hopefully) nut height before you start adjusting your saddle/action. At best, this will give you a much better overall setup but, at worst, it could serve to throw off your action adjustments so they're not where you want them (and even where they end up too low). I'll do a little blowing of my own trumpet here and recommend my Sketchy Setups guides. Particularly relevant here is Sketchy Setups #7 which is dedicated just to acoustic guitars (and even includes some sample target action measurements).
Back to marking…
Remove your saddle from the bridge slot and, before you do anything else, make some mark on it to indicate which end is the bass end and which is the treble. Otherwise, you risk putting it back the wrong way around. Maybe mark a 'B' and 'T' on the side with a pencil.
Next take a good ruler and a very sharp pencil. On the bass side, measure the amount to be removed from the bottom (we always* remove our material from the bottom) on that side. Make as precise a mark here as you can. Repeat the process to indicate how much material you want to remove from the treble end of the saddle to achieve your target action. These two measurements may well be different.
Just to recap the geometry example, if you wanted to reduce the 12th fret action by 2/64 (.8mm) you would remove twice that amount from the bottom of the saddle.
Use the ruler and pencil to join these two marks and that indicates the new bottom of your saddle. That said, I'd recommend against hogging all of that material off in one go. It's a good idea to work there in increments and to try the saddle in the guitar a couple of times on the way. This allows you to try out the action as you go. It's very possible that you'll be happy with the feel before you get to your initial target.
Lowering an acoustic guitar saddle
Lay a sheet of sandpaper (around 150 to 220 grit) on a flat surface. Rub your saddle, in long straight strokes, along the sandpaper to sand away some material from the bottom.
It's pretty much that simple but you do need to keep a few things in mind as you go.
It's better to rub in one direction only. By that I mean, don't rub backwards and forwards. It's harder to keep things accurate when going back and forth.
And it's important to keep things accurate. The bottom of the saddle should be completely straight with no high or low spots. Also, the bottom should be kept at right angles to the saddle side.
Obviously, keep checking as you go. Like I said, it's a good idea to sneak up on this and to fit the saddle, retune, and play a couple of times.
Next time, I'll throw out a last few tips and considerations on this stuff. Stay tuned.
*There are very occasional exceptions to the remove material from the bottom rule. Takamine-style integrated-pickup saddles should never be adjusted from the bottom.
This article written by Gerry Hayes and first published at hazeguitars.com
