Often, when buying an acoustic guitar, it is the small details that do not really catch your eye in the first moment, but are important in practice. It depends on these details whether the guitar is a pleasure for the long term or makes life difficult for us.
Bridge saddle and nut are the two support points of the strings between which the scale is measured. Both offer the guitar builder a wide range of possibilities to influence the intonation, but this topic could be referred to as full-length. This article deals with the question of the material of the two inconspicuous components.
The nut is located between the upper end of the fretboard and the head of the guitar. The bridge is the wooden strip, which is glued in the center of the lower bout of the top. Classical guitar bridges provide the slot for the saddle and the tie block, whereas steel string guitar bridges have holes for the string pegs.
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The saddle serves to position the strings at a defined distance to top and fretboard. For this purpose, the strings are bent over the saddle in a sharp angle. In addition to the stress of the bend, the saddle must withstand the pressure produced by the string tension as well as the friction that is generated while tuning. For this reason it must be made of a very durable and robust material.
The nut directs the strings from the upper end of the fretboard to the head and to the machine heads. In contrast to the bridge saddle, on which the strings are freely supported, the nut has slots that are individually shaped to hold the respective string. The pressure of the string tension acts also on the nut, but the nut is more stressed by the friction caused by tuning, which is why it has to be made of very hard material.
In the past some guitar builders attempted to build saddles and nuts of ebony. Ebony is known as very hard wood, but the above-mentioned stresses led to the need to exchange nut and saddle very often.
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Traditionally luthiers use bone for nuts and saddles. Since the saddle, but above all the nut, is exposed to strong friction forces, bone is predestined as a material here. Bone has a natural fat content and is therefore self-lubricating. For the string, this means that it can slide smoothly during tuning, offering less resistance than other materials.
More and more, acoustic guitars (not just inexpensive ones) are equipped with a plastic bridge saddle and nut. The advantage for the manufacturer lies in the price of the material and in the costs of the production. Plastic saddles and nuts can be cast, while making a bone bridge or saddle requires proper manual work. Bone must first be sawn, then ground and filed.
The disadvantages of the plastic is borne by the guitarist. On the saddle, the strings like to dig, resulting in a burr sooner or later, which leads to broken strings. On the nut, the string also digs into the material and thus gets stuck firmly. Anyone who tried to tune a guitar and felt that the sound did not change until the string suddenly sounded a whole bit higher or lower, was probably confronted with this phenomenon.
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For the unexperienced, the difference between plastic and bone is not easily recognisable, because often the plastic is in color adapted to the bone. Only with a bright white nut or saddle, one can safely assume that it is of plastic, even upon a superficial survey. If you look closely to the nut or saddle, you can also distinguish bone-colored plastic from real bone. Plastic has a perfectly smooth surface, while the bone has a very fine structure. Frequently, bone looks as if it is traversed by fine cracks.
From the nut, however, keep your hands off. Your guitar builder around the corner takes this work for not too much money. This way, you can be sure that the replacement will really bring added value and improved playability.
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Main Types Of Guitar Saddles
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.A guitar’s nut and saddle are the two strips of material – usually made of bone or melamine on a quality classical, acoustic or flamenco guitar – that serve as the support points of the strings. The nut is located at the joint between the headstock and fretboard, and the saddle is found on top of the bridge, which is positioned in the centre of the lower bout of the soundboard.
The nut and saddle stretch the strings tightly between them to ensure they vibrate in a stable and controlled way, so that when you play your instrument, it produces a powerful and clean sound.
The grooves of the nut secure the guitar’s strings at a uniform lateral placement, and guide them from the tuning pegs, down the neck to the saddle. The cut and fit of the nut needs to be flawless: if the grooves are too wide, the strings can slip, causing an unwanted buzzing sound; but if they are too narrow, they will pinch the strings, making it difficult for you to keep them in tune, as well as tuning them accurately in the first place: in fact, this small, unassuming component of your guitar is, in all likelihood, the culprit of most of the tuning problems you may be encounter.
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In case of the above, you would be forgiven for assuming your tuning machines are to blame, but it’s not always all in the name. Before replacing your far more conspicuous (and expensive) tuning machines, it’s well worth checking out your nut first. To make sure all is in order, lift a string out of the groove: it should come out easily, without snagging. Similarly, check there is no room for any sideward movement of the strings within the grooves. If your nut fails either of these tests, it’s probably time to replace it, which, unless you have the specialized tools and precision skills to do it properly, is best left to an experienced guitar technician.
The saddle, like the nut, spaces the strings at an equidistance, but also serves to hold the strings at the desired height above the fingerboard. Otherwise known as
, this height needs to be calibrated to perfection, as it has an impact on the sound, as well as the playability of the instrument: too high and the guitar will be uncomfortable to play; too low, and it will affect the clarity of the sound and the volume. This is why the action of the strings on a flamenco model is lower than that of a classical instrument: it produces that distinctive flamenco buzz, as well as making it easier to play for long periods of time.
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The low string action of the Prudencio Saez 15 Flamenco guitar contributes to its characteristically flamenco sound, as well as to its easy playability
When you strum your guitar, the saddle transmits the vibrations of the strings from the bridge to the top wood, or soundboard, and for this purpose, they are bent over the saddle at an angle. As well as the stress of the curvature, the saddle must be able to support the pressure produced by the string tension: this is why the saddle needs to be made of a material that is both strong and durable.
Most guitar makers in Spain use either bone or melamine to make the saddle and the nut of their quality instruments – and generally use the same material on a particular model for both. Bone and melamine are hard, dense and very light materials, and offer great resonance and sustain. And both have excellent sound-transmitting properties.
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Although it has to be said that bone is considered superior to melamine (and consequently is traditionally used for most top of the range models), in the end, the choice the luthier makes comes down to achieving the most balanced
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