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This is the bottom of a factory compensated saddle in a washburn guitar. This angle looks so on purpose, the flat part you can see is actually the top of the saddle. The guitar has an undersaddle pickup, but it seems to me the saddle should still be flat on the bottom. Am I missing something?

Tilting the saddle and slot back can reduce the torque on the top, or maybe better to say, change some of it to downforce. Perhaps they are doing this to facilitate more down pressure on the undersaddle piezo? Just a guess. . .

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Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.

This is probably a dumb question, but how does it look when you put it back in the slot with the flat side down? Any chance it got flipped by someone?

It's sloppier than I like when I put in properly, and it wouldn't really be possible to put it in upside down. The picture I have doesn't show it but the "flat" looking side of the saddle is actually radiused from e string to e string, and has the factory built compensation on it.

It's an offshore factory guitar, the slant on the bottom of the saddle is very uniform, so either it left the factory with a very sketchy saddle, or its something I've never seen before and there is a good reason for it. In case its the latter I thought should check before writing the idea off.

Gotcha... that's definitely a lot of taper for a saddle bottom.

Poor quality control is no surprise here. Could be the factory or a "setup" guy stateside. . .

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Frank Ford

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How does it sound? Try one with a flat bottom to see if it changes.

Sounds fine, kind of thin, but exactly how you'd expect a mid level offshore guitar to sound. I suspect the undersaddle pickup (which is one of those soft ones) cradles it somewhat so it doesn't rock too much, and despite the angle the part that does touch the bottom of the slot is flat all the way along so I imagine it transfers the energy from the strings to the pickup efficiently. The guitar was an older ladies who just wanted the strings changed so I wasn't gonna jump into replacing the saddle just because. It was more an issue of my own curiosity.

Conor, I don't know why your saddle would be that way but I've seen a lot of people do weird things trying to get UST's to work. Particularly with balance between strings - I've seen modeling clay in the slot and weird shapes on the bottom of saddles. One of the reasons I don't like installing UST's, sometimes you just can't get them balanced.

Otherwise I think its a bad idea and would suggest making a new saddle with a nice flat bottom and give that a try. Might be interesting to listen to it thru an amp and see if the angled one sounds better - if so put it back in.

Otherwise, no clue. Could just be bad QC like Frank suggests.

Looks just flat wrong to me. Saddles are supposed to sit flat on an "arched" saddle slot when there is string tension and up to pitch. Don't know anything about UST's, DVD's or BVD's. A mIc is the best for acoustic sound.
Couldn't be a slanted slot as the bottom would still be 90 degrees to the slot.

Good call, I wasn’t thinking that one through. . .

_________________
Bryan Bear PMoMC

Take care of your feet, and your feet will take care of you.