Every guitar needs regular maintenance, and at some point, no matter how careful you are with your instrument, it’s bound to need some kind of repair. If, say, your old campfire guitar isn’t fun to play anymore because the action (the distance between your strings and the fingerboard) is too high, it might be time to adjust your saddle height.
Your guitar’s bridge saddle is the most significant piece of the puzzle when it comes to raising or lowering action. Most modern guitars have a drop-in saddle that can be removed when the strings are off. If you have a vintage-style through-cut saddle, changing the height is best left to a pro.
After the truss rod is set correctly and your nut slots are filed properly, saddle height can be adjusted, if needed. First, take some action measurements at the 12th fret on the two outermost strings while your guitar is strung up to pitch. I like to measure from the top of the fret to the bottom of the string in 1/64-inch increments. Since action should be set relative to how you play, I’ll leave the specifics to you and the manufacturer of your guitar. The average string action of the guitars I set up is 3/32 inches on the bass side and 1/16 inches on the treble side. It is important to note that to change your action height at the 12th fret a certain distance, you must multiply that number by two to find the height to raise it at the saddle. Before you decide whether or not to make an adjustment you should also consider that your saddle must fit deep and snug in the slot without wiggle room, that the saddle top radius should match that of your fingerboard, and that the desired saddle height should probably not average less than 1/32 inch or more than 3/16 inches above the bridge. Also, if your guitar has an undersaddle pickup, shimming the saddle may change the way it functions.
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To slightly raise your saddle in a pinch, any hard flat material will do. Cutting up an old credit card into strips as wide as your saddle slot works nicely. For long-term saddle shims, hardwood veneer strips work great, and bone saddle shims are also available.
To lower your saddle, all you need is a pencil and straightedge to mark your saddle and a file and bench vise to remove material. If you don’t have access to a bench vise, a nice flat countertop and some course (80 grit) sandpaper will also work. It’s easiest to take material off the bottom of the saddle, because it’s flat. You should only take material off the saddle top if you want to change the top radius or smooth away string wear. Once you’ve decided how much to remove from the bottom of the saddle, mark the saddle under the low and high strings and connect them with a straight line. Then file or sand away the extra material until you hit your line, checking periodically to make sure the bottom is still square to the sides. To make sure the bottom of the saddle is truly flat, you can run it back and forth over some 120 grit sandpaper on a flat surface. This step is especially important for maintaining string balance if you have an undersaddle pickup.
Brian Michael is the Chief Repair guy at Gryphon Stringed Instruments in Palo Alto, California. In his spare time he builds electric guitars and basses in his home shop, and plays in the band Fictitious Beast.As we've mentioned in the last post, lowering the action on most acoustic guitars is not just a matter of adjusting a couple of screws like we might on an electric. Nope. An acoustic generally requires us to remove the bridge saddle and shorten it. Removing material from the saddle lowers it, thereby lowering the action.
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Last time, I outlined a trick to make this job a little more scientific and a little less scary. So, this time, we'll look at how to lower our saddle.
I'm making the assumption that you've measured your current action and have used the geometry trick from the last post to determine how much saddle material to remove in order to achieve your target action.
First, if you don't have a target action, it's completely ok to work this by 'feel'. If you want to remove a little from the bottom of the saddle, re-tune to pitch and try it out, that's absolutely fine. Go for it. I'd recommend marking a straight line across the front of your saddle each time you begin to work at it, just so you can keep track of how much you're taking off each time.
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Second — and more importantly —setting action isn't something that I recommend doing in isolation. By that, I mean that other factors can affect how an instrument's action appears. I definitely recommend addressing the neck relief and (hopefully) nut height
You start adjusting your saddle/action. At best, this will give you a much better overall setup but, at worst, it could serve to throw off your action adjustments so they're not where you want them (and even where they end up too low). I'll do a little blowing of my own trumpet here and recommend my Sketchy Setups guides. Particularly relevant here is Sketchy Setups #7 which is dedicated just to acoustic guitars (and even includes some sample target action measurements).
Remove your saddle from the bridge slot and, before you do anything else, make some mark on it to indicate which end is the bass end and which is the treble. Otherwise, you risk putting it back the wrong way around. Maybe mark a 'B' and 'T' on the side with a pencil.
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(we always* remove our material from the bottom) on that side. Make as precise a mark here as you can. Repeat the process to indicate how much material you want to remove from the treble end of the saddle to achieve your target action. These two measurements may well be different.
Use the ruler and pencil to join these two marks and that indicates the new bottom of your saddle. That said, I'd recommend against hogging all of that material off in one go. It's a good idea to work there in increments and to try the saddle in the guitar a couple of times on the way. This allows you to try out the action as you go. It's very possible that you'll be happy with the feel before you get to your initial target.
Lay a sheet of sandpaper (around 150 to 220 grit) on a flat surface. Rub your saddle, in long straight strokes, along the sandpaper to sand away some material from the bottom.
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It's better to rub in one direction only. By that I mean, don't rub backwards and forwards. It's harder to keep things accurate when going back and forth.
And it's important to keep things accurate. The bottom of the saddle should be completely straight with no high or low spots. Also, the bottom should be kept at right angles to the saddle side.
Obviously, keep checking as you go. Like I said, it's a good idea to sneak up on this and to fit the saddle, retune, and play a couple of times.
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*There are very occasional exceptions to the remove material from the bottom rule. Takamine-style integrated-pickup saddles should never be adjusted from the bottom.This article was co-authored by Ron Bautista and by staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD. Ron Bautista is a professional guitarist and guitar teacher at More Music in Santa Cruz, California and the Los Gatos School of Music in Los Gatos, California. He has played guitar for over 30 years and has taught music for over 15 years. He teaches Jazz, Rock, Fusion, Blues, Fingerpicking, and Bluegrass.
If your guitar is too difficult to play, it may be because the action is too high. This means there is too large of a distance between the strings and the fretboard, which will make it more difficult for you to fret the strings. Lowering the action on an acoustic guitar is a three-part process. You must straighten the neck, lower the nut, and set up the saddle.
This article was co-authored by Ron Bautista and by staff writer, Jennifer Mueller, JD. Ron Bautista is a professional guitarist and guitar teacher at More Music in Santa Cruz, California and the Los Gatos School of Music in Los Gatos, California. He has played guitar for over 30 years and has taught music for over 15 years. He teaches Jazz, Rock, Fusion, Blues, Fingerpicking, and Bluegrass. This article has been viewed 379, 540 times.
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To lower the action on your acoustic guitar, find the truss rod screw, then use an allen wrench or nut driver to adjust the action. Alternatively, loosen the strings and take off the lower 3 strings to remove the saddle from the bridge. Then, slightly sand the saddle down to lower the action before replacing the saddle and strings, and re-tightening the strings. When you’ve got
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