Tak saddle

Sean

I'm thinking I'm supposed to know this. Why is my saddle lower on the treble side than the bass? Hence, the action is lower on the treble side. This has started bothering me more and more, I think because I'm using much more of the fretboard than I used to. So, I want to lower the action by reducing the saddle height. Do I keep the ratio of the difference in height?

AlanRatcliffe

Yes - you need more clearance on the bass side, especially as you bring the action lower. The lower the string's pitch the wider the string vibrates. So just sand a couple of mm off the bottom of the saddle. Draw a pencil line to make it easier. Just make sure it's properly flat so that the string-to-string balance of the pickup is not compromised.

Gearhead

? Unfortunately Alan beat me to the answer, so all I can do is elaborate ?

Alan Ratcliffe wrote The lower the string's pitch the wider the string vibrates.

The physical background is that the energy in a string's vibration equals the frequency times the swing excursion times some other factors. In other words, your lower E at two octaves down (1/4th of the frequency) from the high E will swing four times further away from the center to hold the same energy. I agree that we don't play the two strings with the same amount of energy, but this factor of four clearly indicates you must expect the lower E to start buzzing at a much higher action than the high E. The rest of the strings follow suit.

Sean

Alan Ratcliffe wrote Yes - you need more clearance on the bass side, especially as you bring the action lower. The lower the string's pitch the wider the string vibrates. So just sand a couple of mm off the bottom of the saddle. Draw a pencil line to make it easier. Just make sure it's properly flat so that the string-to-string balance of the pickup is not compromised.

Thanks Alan. I should have taken a pic of the thing before I took it apart. The height at the 22nd fret on the bass side from the fret board to the bottom of the string was 5mm. On the treble side, 3mm. The treble side does not bother me too much, but it can come down a bit. The bass side, especially playing from the 5 fret upwards, is really awkward, plenty of travel before the string meets the fret. So if you say "a couple" of mm, how much would you propose I start off with? Could I take 1 mm of the treble side and 2 mm of the bass side? I did mark the heights before taking it all apart, primitive I know ? but here is a pic. I placed the little papers with the pencil marks on the fretboard to give an idea of where the strings were :-[

Also, I thought it was super important to get the bottom of the saddle perfectly flat and straight. I was thinking of building a small basic jig and using my router?

AlanRatcliffe

I prefer working slow and steady (unless there is a huge amount to remove), so rubbing the saddle on sandpaper stuck down to a piece of plate glass is my preferred method. No chance of chipping with sanding and you can stop and try it out at any point. But yeah, 1mm and 2mm on treble and bass sides respectively sounds like a good starting point. Then pop it back in, tension up, try it and see.

Why'd you take the pickup and endpin jack out? Just for a looksee?

Sean

Alan Ratcliffe wrote I prefer working slow and steady (unless there is a huge amount to remove), so rubbing the saddle on sandpaper stuck down to a piece of plate glass is my preferred method. No chance of chipping with sanding and you can stop and try it out at any point. But yeah, 1mm and 2mm on treble and bass sides respectively sounds like a good starting point. Then pop it back in, tension up, try it and see.

Why'd you take the pickup and endpin jack out? Just for a looksee?

Will go with the sanding method, thanks.

Yes, I took the pickup etc. out to take a look. I bought a UST system from Bob that he took out of his Morgan some time back. I was planning on using it in an acoustic build that in the meantime has been put on the back burner. Gearhead once suggested I do a swop in my Tak to see what it sounded like. I'm not using the Tak this coming weekend, so I thought I'd use the gap to do some work on it. But swapping the pickups is probably beyond my abilities. I need some guidance. Not sure if Gearhead meant replacing the whole system or just the under saddle part. The one I got from Bob is a type of flexible ribbon. But just swapping that means pulling stuff apart, and I really don't know anything about this stuff to be doing things like that. So I'll just be doing the saddle for now I think ?

Sean

AlanRatcliffe

Ah! I see. ?

Sean

Right, so I take 1mm off the treble side, 2mm off the bass. The sanding method works like a charm ? thanks Alan

Put the electronics back, fit the saddle, restring with the old strings to see how it looks and plays

Test the pickup out, everything sounds great, action is nice, tweak the truss rod and everything is perfect...

...well almost perfect, I'm not sure if it's because it's late and I did something wrong, but I restrung as per usual, and this happened...

Aaargh!!! The high E string chips the corner off the nut ☹ ... I'm thinking the plastic is cheap and old? Sigh, I'm going to bed...