I own a rather nice handmade dreadnaught Japanese, a 70's Martin copy. With abalone inlays and quality woods throughout, I'm scratching my head as to why this particular guitar does not 'ring out' like it should. I am considering some ebony bridge pins, a bone saddle etc. What would any helpful guitar 'expert' suggest might get this guitar to where it should be soundwise? Many thanks in lieu of some advice, Toby.

Hi Toby,

Bridge pins only make a minor contribution to tone and sustain. But good ebony/boxwood ones are very cheap so worth getting anyway.

If the saddle and/or nut are plastic, especially 70's plastic, then they are your main candidates for replacement. Personally, I would go for good quality bone and again the bone blanks are very cheap.

However, whilst good materials are important, what is most important is ensuring that they are properly cut and fitted. And unless you really do know what you are doing, that's a job for a skilled and experienced professional. Because as well as making the nut and saddle it may well be necessary to do some work on the saddle slot and the shelf where the nut sits.

There is another potential issue too. Good materials alone do not make a good instrument. In the 70's Martin guitars had a reputation for being over-built and far too heavily finished, the company's owners at the time were concerned about the cost of providing Warranty support. This had a negative impact on the sound of those instruments and hit Martin's reputation for a long time. If your guitar is a well made copy of a period Martin, then it may well suffer from similar problems. If the front, back, sides and braces are over-built and the finish is too thick, then that is the hard limit of how good the guitar will sound.

So, by all means get bone nut and saddle fitted by someone who knows what they are doing, and get some ebony bridge pins properly fitted at the same time. That will get the guitar as good as it can reasonably be expected to be. Get your luthier to check the guitar over before doing any work, and ask him to check for things like loose braces, cracks, splits, etc. They can rob a guitar of tone and volume and are generally worth fixing. But beyond that resist the temptation to start spending more in the hope that it will make a big difference, it won't.

Hope that helps.

Andy

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When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.

Thanks very much for your advice. How about another article from your good self on how to replace a saddle? I find it fascinating how variety of factors like finish have such a big impact on sound/tone. Yes, it's possible this guitar is slightly over-finished. The top is spruce and thinly finished the sides and back look to be a dark mahogany and more heavy finished. The top is edged with abalone all around and now I'm wondering if that too may be having an effect soundwise? Made by the Yasuma guitar company. I own two. The other is just superb sounding. Anyway I'll start with a bone saddle and reverse engineer it from the existing one. Wonder if anyone out there has a similar problem with a real Martin? Toby

Actually, the nut piece covers almost everything you need to know for the saddle too Toby. But glad you appreciated it

The key things to bear in mind for a saddle are these. 1st, the saddle needs to be a comfortable fit in the saddle slot. A friction fit is too tight, it needs to be just loose enough so you can lift it out and drop in in without friction, but not so loose that it wobbles backwards and forwards. 2nd, the bottom of the saddle needs to be perfectly flat and square in all planes, length ways, width ways, and across the diagonals. 3rd, and most important, the bottom of the saddle slot needs to be equally flat in all planes, and that is where people have most problems. There are various ways of achieving that, but they all require a degree of experience, some specialist tools (either a modified router plane, or a Dremel and a suitable jig) or a mixture of both. If you don't have the tools, it will be cheaper to pay someone to do the work than buy them.

And while I am a strong advocate of DIY, I am also a strong advocate of knowing the limits of DIY. Some jobs are really best done by someone with experience and the right tools. For example, your Yasuma sounds like a fine instrument and not one you should be experimenting on if you don't know what you are doing. And it is important to stress that weak tone and sustain are also symptoms of loose/damaged braces as well as poorly made/fitted nuts and saddles. On a quality instrument like yours I would want to at least exclude mechanical faults like that before doing any other work. Also, switching from plastic bridge pins to wooden ones might require some modifications, either to the new bridge pins or the bridge itself. Nothing major, but again something you need to understand before undertaking yourself.

Full shell binding will have some effect on the tone, but really insignificant. The difference between two tops cut from the same piece of wood will be far greater, by orders of magnitude.

And finally, you have two guitars from the same company, both over 30 years old. Guitars really do change with age so there is no reason to assume that just because one sounds superb after 30 years of ageing that the other will too.

Andy

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When the going gets weird, the Weird turn Pro.