Compensated saddles...

[schwa]

I recently had my guitar in for a tune up, and was most surprised by an upgrade that I didn't even explicitly ask for. My luthier compensated my saddle. It's a little zig zag piece of art. It's really made a noticeable difference in how well the guitar plays in tune.

I've been playing for almost 40 years now, and for most of them, I didn't even know about compensating the saddle. Then I started seeing some guitars with a compensated B string. It wasn't until the tune up that I learned that any saddle can be compensated, even my old style glued in version.

Prior to the tune up, I tuned the guitar's b string to a fretted note, I thought that was just the way it goes.

Do you folks compensate your saddles? Do you think it's even necessary? I only have the one acoustic, but I would consider this on any guitar I purchase in the future.

[akafloyd]

I think it's hard to find guitars that don't have intonated saddles anymore. In many cases, especially with lower cost guitars, they are intonated to a pattern rather than to the guitar itself.

[Pippin]

Hi Schwa,

I use compensated saddle in all my acoustics (and replaced those without).

I have found saddle compensation "indispensable" in shorter scale <25" instruments, and later learnt that shorter scales give less tolerance to intonation issues due to string guage / tension.
As a corollary, longer scale, say 25.5", can work OK without saddle compensation. And I have found that to be the case in my very limited experience.

Pip

I have nothing against compensated saddles, but I've had guitars with cut through uncompensated saddles that had fine intonation, and I think that compensating a cut-through long saddle looks pretty unsightly. With a drop-in saddle, though, I think it looks fine, and sure can't hurt.