Tidying up an acoustic

[JD01]

A mate of mine was playing my Martin yesterday and got a bit of acoustic jealousy.
He somehow managed to lose the bridge saddle for his acoustic (moderate quality Fender) ordered one randomly and it was all wrong.

He's giving me his guitar to sort out for him, doesn't mind me spending a few quid on it.

1. How do I decide what bridge saddle to get?
2. How best to file it down the right height? (Previously I've stuck some sandpaper on the bench and gradually taken it down the right height by trial and error.
3. I think, from memory, the nut is OK. If not recommendation for some nut files?
4. I don't want to get into actual re-levelling and crowning frets. But a bit of a polish and some love wouldn't go amiss. How should I approach this?

[Lt. Bob]

for the bridge I always cut them down from the bottom if the top is already shaped right.
Then it's easy since you only have to do a flat bottom.
I used to mark how much I wanted to remove and then clamped it there in a vise so I just filed it down to the top of the vise.

[muttley]

I'm doing some acoustic bridge work in the next week so I will try and document it. The key is to fashion a good fitting square and true width and length blank first thats sits snugly in the slot. You should be able to slot it in and turn the guitar over with out it falling out and also be able to pull it easily by hand. Then you shape the same radius as the fret tops onto it and work the action from the bottom as Lt says. Finally you carve/curve the top to adjust for any intonation issues. Bone works best. If you give me an idea of the width and size I can pop a blank or two in the post.

If the thing has an under saddle pickup you need to get perfect contact all along the length of the slot.

FTR there is no such thing as a "moderate quality Fender [acoustic], they are all shite...

[JD01]

OK, so its a Fender GA45SCE.
Just trying to find the right saddle

Can't find a spec which includes saddle width anywhere on the web.

[muttley]

Measure it... TBH if you get a bone saddle it will need to be sanded back in all likely hood. Plastic saddles are shit. Whatever way you go you will have to work the saddle to shape, drop in replacements will rarely do it justice.

[JD01]

Measure it... TBH if you get a bone saddle it will need to be sanded back in all likely hood. Plastic saddles are shit. Whatever way you go you will have to work the saddle to shape, drop in replacements will rarely do it justice.

Cool - this shouldn't be a problem now - ordered a few bits from Thomann. Looked like he'd walloped his bridge pins in with a sledge hammer so I got a new set of them while I was at it. How's your work schedule looking at the moment?

[muttley]

You have a bridge pin remover on the tip of your string winder if you have one. If not then you can easily make one. Its just a V groove at the end of a bit of plastic or wood.

Work is picking up again but still nowhere near where it should be. At least I have finished all the hard work on the house I had planned.

[JD01]

You have a bridge pin remover on the tip of your string winder if you have one. If not then you can easily make one. Its just a V groove at the end of a bit of plastic or wood.

Work is picking up again but still nowhere near where it should be. At least I have finished all the hard work on the house I had planned.

You got access to all the parts you need to start work on builds and pickups?

[muttley]

You have a bridge pin remover on the tip of your string winder if you have one. If not then you can easily make one. Its just a V groove at the end of a bit of plastic or wood.

Work is picking up again but still nowhere near where it should be. At least I have finished all the hard work on the house I had planned.

You got access to all the parts you need to start work on builds and pickups?

Yeh, pretty much. The main problem was the short order stuff that has to come from China but all that is back to normal now. The main problem is that people are still holding off spending.... I cant really blame them

[JD01]

This turned out to be a success.
I ended up getting a Tusq bridge saddle from Thomann. I needed to get a few packs of strings, picks and other nik naks so I got the free delivery.

I just taped some sandpaper to my bench marked the saddle how far I wanted to sand it down, switching to finer paper when I got near my mark.
Strung it, played it and repeated the process until I was happy with it.

The action at the nut is still a bit higher than I'd like. But I hadn't planned on doing anything with that.
The guitar now plays better than it ever did. Strange neck though - quite fat and U shaped, almost like a classical guitar crossed with a Les Paul.