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I recently picked up a guitar for my daughter that is missing a bridge and saddle. The guitar has a tailpiece for the strings and I would like to make my own bridge for it. Are there general guidlines to follow when building a bridge?

I've gone through the board and have seen people mention measurements about the height of the strings at the bridge to the how far they are from the frets. I've seen the slanted saddles and bridges that slightly slope from one side to another.

I'm new to this so the information is a little overwhelming. Thanks for any suggestions or help in advance.

George

Hey George, I've got a fairly simple solution for you that will give you a good looking handcrafted bridge for this. Go to this thread - viewtopic.php?f=10101&t=22463, and look at the bridge on it.

I took a standard rosewood acoustic bridge, you can get them from stew-mac or ebay. Mine was a reject Martin bridge I had bought off ebay. I decided to go with a tailpiece at the last minute and to speed things up and see if the tailpiece idea was going to work on this guitar, I just ripped the standard bridge front part, with the slanted saddle slot down to just over 5/8" wide. That gets you the critical part, (accurate saddle slot), easy and then just shape the rest how you like it. I sanded mine to shape on a spindle sander, but you can do it on a small belt sander clamped upside down, or shape it by hand with files and sandpaper.

You can get a bone saddle at the same place you buy the bridge. A little shaping and polishing and your set. The string height to shoot for is usually 1/2", it can be a little higher on a tailpiece guitar but it's really going to be determined by the neck set on your guitar. So you adjust the height of bridge and saddle to make the action of the strings over the neck comfortable.

Hope this helps,
Joe

Joe,

Thank you for the information. I found a photo of the same model guitar and I cut out a block of wood to work with. I bought the guitar for $5 so I'm hoping to not spend too much money repairing it. By the way the guitar on the link you posted looks great. One day I hope to be able to put something together like that

George

Why would one saddle be slanted and another not? What determines when you do that?

George,

The saddle slot is slanted to create correct intonation of the strings. I'm not
an expert, but the lower/thicker strings require a slightly different scale
length to create the best tonal accuracy as you move down the frets.

_________________
Gene

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