Advice on Original Martin replacement saddles please

[GazzaBloom]

The action on my 6 month old Martin D28 has crept up a bit as the woods have settled and I want to buy a genuine Martin compensated bridge saddle blank that I can sand down and fit to reduce the action slightly (I plan to leave the original bridge untouched in case I mess it up!)

I see that Martin sell compensated saddles direct but there are 3 to choose from:

Bone, high compensated (7/16)
Tusq, high compensated (7/16)
Tusq, medium compensated (3/8)

My D28 is a 2015 and the spec on the website at the time claimed a bone saddle was fitted.

What's the difference between the high and medium saddles? Which one should I get to match the original fitted saddle, the bone one?

Any guidance would be appreciated.

[murrmac123]

Not sure about which saddle you should get, but I would definitely suggest altering the thread title to "Advice on Original Martin replacement saddles please".

Originally Posted by GazzaBloom

What's the difference between the high and medium saddles?

1/16"

Couldn't help myself.

You need the bone saddle. That's what's in your D-28 now. Since it apparently only comes in one height, you don't have to choose.

[Bridgepin]

Are you keeping an eye on the humidity were you keep your guitar?

[TOCS]

The action is rising constantly on my D-28 too and I've had it for two years. I just made a carbon copy of the saddle the guitar came with so I could experiment with that down a little (again, after getting it set up last year by a luthier).

I'd just buy a blank bone saddle and just shape it exactly like the one you already have. Then take off some material from the bottom to see how a lower saddle might fit. It's cheap, and you can do it with almost no tools. I just used a normal hacksaw to make the length fit. I didn't have any sandpaper so I just used the tiles in our garden to take off some bottom material, haha. Any file (even a nail file) will be enough to compensate the saddle, in my experience.

[GazzaBloom]

Originally Posted by Bridgepin

Are you keeping an eye on the humidity were you keep your guitar?

Yes, it's pretty stable here in the UK. I do keep the guitar on a wall hanger in a room with no direct sunlight on the guitar and humidty is around 45-47% a little higher briefly when it rains and a little lower when it's dry.

[GazzaBloom]

Originally Posted by murrmac123

Not sure about which saddle you should get, but I would definitely suggest altering the thread title to "Advice on Original Martin replacement saddles please".

That's fixed

[SpruceTop]

Originally Posted by GazzaBloom

The action on my 6 month old Martin D28 has crept up a bit as the woods have settled and I want to buy a genuine Martin compensated bridge saddle blank that I can sand down and fit to reduce the action slightly (I plan to leave the original bridge untouched in case I mess it up!)

I see that Martin sell compensated saddles direct but there are 3 to choose from:

Bone, high compensated (7/16)
Tusq, high compensated (7/16)
Tusq, medium compensated (3/8)

My D28 is a 2015 and the spec on the website at the time claimed a bone saddle was fitted.

What's the difference between the high and medium saddles? Which one should I get to match the original fitted saddle, the bone one?

Any guidance would be appreciated.

You've mentioned that your humidity is maintained within a good range, so, the first thing you want to do is check your neck-relief! It may have increased because of six months of string tension and that can raise your action slightly but it also makes the strings a bit higher in the middle-fret area (3rd- to 10th-fret) of your guitar's fingerboard. Check your neck-relief by fretting the 6th-string at the 1st- and 13th-fret and observing the amount of gap you have between the bottom of the 6th-string and the top of the 7th fret; it should be about .005" to .010" as measured by feeler gages (you do this by capoing the 6th-string at the 1st-fret, and while fretting the string at the 13th-fret, slide feeler gages between the bottom of the string and the top of the 7th-fret) OR just eyeball the gap. If it's excessive, use a 5 mm Allen wrench and adjust the gap until it's reduced from where it was but doesn't disappear by adjusting your truss-rod, clockwise, to reduce neck-relief. Do this a little bit of a turn at a time by estimating 1/12 of a turn or 1/2 of a flat on the 5 mm Allen wrench, and check the playability after each adjustment. Don't turn too much as you don't want to reduce the neck-relief too much for your style of playing and have your strings buzz while playing.

[GazzaBloom]

Originally Posted by SpruceTop

You've mentioned that your humidity is maintained within a good range, so, the first thing you want to do is check your neck-relief! It may have increased because of six months of string tension and that can raise your action slightly but it also makes the strings a bit higher in the middle-fret area (3rd- to 10th-fret) of your guitar's fingerboard. Check your neck-relief by fretting the 6th-string at the 1st- and 13th-fret and observing the amount of gap you have between the bottom of the 6th-string and the top of the 7th fret; it should be about .005" to .010" as measured by feeler gages (you do this by capoing the 6th-string at the 1st-fret, and while fretting the string at the 13th-fret, slide feeler gages between the bottom of the string and the top of the 7th-fret) OR just eyeball the gap. If it's excessive, use a 5 mm Allen wrench and adjust the gap until it's reduced from where it was but doesn't disappear by adjusting your truss-rod, clockwise, to reduce neck-relief. Do this a little bit of a turn at a time by estimating 1/12 of a turn or 1/2 of a flat on the 5 mm Allen wrench, and check the playability after each adjustment. Don't turn too much as you don't want to reduce the neck-relief too much for your style of playing and have your strings buzz while playing.

Thanks for the guide to checking intonation, after 30 years+ playing I have that one down no problem.

As I stated it's wood settling, I've owned enough guitars over the years to know how this goes, action always creeps up and then settles, so saddle needs adjusting. I want to keep the original intact so was just looking to confirm which Martin replacement to order. I have ordered the bone one.

[SpruceTop]

The checking of your Martin's neck-relief wasn't mentioned in any of the posts previous to mine so I thought I'd suggest checking it.