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Some of you might remember that Martin D28 with the bridge in the wrong place, among a few other problems? The kind lady at Martin checked the serial number, and it was not registered. But said if we could find the reciept it can be taken care of. She asked me what was wrong and I told her how the bridge was about 1/8" out of proper location. She told me that it was not an error... that it was done according to spec. She knew about this, but said it was done on purpose.

Why would Martin place a bridge in the wrong location "on purpose"?

Mike

The bridge is wrong according to what? Which way? Is the saddle correct? Just train to get an idea of what's happened so I can possibly formulate an idea of why.

She may have thought you were not up on guitars and were saying it was off 1/8" more then scale lenght. Which is more in line considering compensation. My best guess.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Crud. Now I cannot remember which direction it was off. There is thread in here somewhere... I used the SaddleMatic to measure its location. Here is the link: viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=38631&st=0&sk=t&sd=a&hilit=martin+saddlematic+d28

Mike

Hmmm. I told it was the bridge location, not the saddle. The saddle slot is canted for compensation. Perhaps she thought that was what I was referring too...? If the bridge is in the wrong location, it just will not tune properly. They know that.

Hmmm I see no reason for that. Sounds like toms idea is a a good one.

If it's a 70's era 28, they're aware of it... painfully aware. Todd's right, talk to someone else.

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Jim Womack

"Be thankful we're not getting all the government we're paying for. "
Will Rogers

Martin is changing a lot of the warranty coverage . I am a repair center and they are not covering a lot of the issues they used to.
Sign of the times I am afraid.

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

If you're measuring the scale length(2x the frets1-12 length) that won't land on the saddle at the high e string.

About 1/8" or a bit less is added at the high e string to the scale length for compensation, and the another 1/8" or a bit less is added slanting to the low E string.

so I think she was saying that your saddle is placed 1/8"back of the actual scale length, so she's right. And that is correct.

Does it play and tune ok? What year is it?

It definitely sucks. Won't tune right. According to Dad who owned it, it always sucked and got worse with time (neck issue).

Mike

Mike: As John Hall points out,a sign of the times. I'm know that Martin is very much aware of the problem but the phone person may not be up on the technical end of things. Just more of a sign of the times. You were lucky,you got a real person to talk to. There is a post on the forum about glue for a Formica guitar.................!! Sign of the times. Enough of that.
John Arnold has suggested an alternate repair is to use a shorter scale fingerboard. Neet idea I think, saves messing up things at the bridge.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

http://www.axinc.net/category_s/47.htm
you can find this here

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John Hall
blues creek guitars
Authorized CF Martin Repair
Co President of ASIA
You Don't know what you don't know until you know it

It will be interesting to see how Martin handles the warranty on their HPL guitars. In my experience HPL materials tend to deform and become brittle with age. Refinishing such materials becomes problematic, although I don't think that is much of a warranty concern.
I still build some HPL bodied instruments. They are cheap and fun, not "heirloom quality" that the old school Martin guitars are expected to have.

The X-series (HPL) are not designed for maintenance or repair. In fact, the process is so different that they are not made in the production line used for all of the other models. I spent a few days in that operation seeing how it all worked, which is actually rather satisfying since it is a cellular production space with a dozen or so employees handling everything. It's the only place at Martin where you can see a guitar go from start to finish in a day rather than a couple of months. Put simply, warranty coverage consists of complete replacement of the instrument. Not only would a repair cost more than replacement... There are only a handful of parts that can even be removed using traditional methods.

Another point worth mentioning is that only the wood parts are finished on X-series guitars. Everything HPL makes use of the stock surface finish of the material. I spent a decent amount of time with Martin R&D, and learned all kinds of interesting stuff about HPL. Among other things that it is acoustically neutral, which also opens it up to potential for modifying its response using sawdust and additive minerals. Toss Ned Steinberger into the mix (who was there at the same time) and I was fortunate to participate in some very interesting conversations about off the wall guitar concepts.

Ummm, where/why did HPL enter into the discussion?

Mike

Sorry Mike,
I didn't mean to hijack your thread. I thought the discussion had evolved from your specific problem to more about how Martin is handling warranty work in general. HPL may not stand the test of time like wood.
Again, My apologies....

Sharp intonation = bridge too close to the soundhole.
Flat intonation = bridge too close to the tail block.
The 1970's Martins had misplaced bridges because of worn templates. The 'legend' is that there were four templates, the two worn ones placed the bridge closer to the soundhole by 1/8" and 3/16+", respectively. I suspect the two correct templates were metal, rather than wood
Either that, or they were newer and had not been used enough to wear.

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John

I've also heard worn templates were the reason the headstock shapes varied over the years. Are we jacking Mike's thread again?