School me on saddles please

S

SJ318

New member
Hi,
Got a Squire Deluxe a year ago cause it was basswood (bad back) and it had a 2 post fulcrum (which I like) and the saddles sound so SH*TTY words can not berate it enough. My J.Beck saddles and the Saddles I got (block solid, no graphite, all metal) at StewMac both sound WAY WAY better than the Squire ones.
The StewMac ones look like different metal than the Fender J.Beck saddles but both sound equally full, on the same plate w/the same Killer brand brass trem block. The Squire one /with same plate, block, are just so bad I can't hardly play it. I also can't afford new saddles for a while and I mis-placed my Fender saddles for now. But that is not the question(lost saddles). The question is:
Anyone know about saddles and what the ones I mentioned are made of?
Thanks for your time,
SJB
 
Re: School me on saddles please

Garbage die-cast pot metal. Guitarfetish.com sells a set of stainless steel saddles for $13
 
Re: School me on saddles please

Anthill music has the oem fender bent steel saddles for $15 bridge and all

*(Sent from my durned phone!)*
 
Re: School me on saddles please

Thanks all,
I prefer the solid. Aceman, I don't get the joke. Is it a pun on horse saddles? Gotta be. Would the Gotoh sound any better than guitarfetish or Stewmac steel block saddles? Or the Fender block saddles for that matter. When I buy it must be the best, every penny counts for me for the near future. I was on the dentist chair for 3 f'ing hours-2:15 to 5:15, no kidding, part of my $3,000.00 dollar dental crown rehabilitation. I told my dentist there were 3 teeth I knew I could live without, so if they needed filling:o.k., if they needed crowns: Yank Em' Out!
One thing I read on one of those pages said solid saddles are too much and project too much mid and high, with not much low (bent saddle page). I don't believe that. Do any of you guys? I know you know. Many of you are serious builders. Pro or not.
TFYT,
SJ
 
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Re: School me on saddles please

Yeah,
So I ask again, the guitarfetish ones look very good, and say they are solid steel, so are they just as good as Gotoh, Fender solid, Stewmac, as long as they say solid steel they gotta be better than that garbage pot metal Squire?
SJ
Aceman-American or English a horse saddle joke still?
 
Re: School me on saddles please

I bought a strat brass block from GF once. Nice communication, but their product was so and so, it was advertized as fitting an squire strat, but this involved a lot of modifications to fit + it did nothing to the sound. But that was the brass block anyway.
I have bought a locking nut from Gotoh via the g-jax, and it was superbly manufactured, much much better than the German schaller i used to have before the gotoh. My guitar started having screaming natural harmonics Pantera-style like never before. So, i'd say Gotoh, Made in Japan, all the way.

I'd say a guitar's components should follow a certain harmony to whether it sounds good or not. If you like a guitar, then by all means upgrade it with fine parts. Otherwise, just try to buy lower quality parts but still better than the cheap stock ones.
 
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Re: School me on saddles please

Greekdude,
That sounds like screaming endorsement, I might have do that. Any technical reason you can give why Gotoh wins in your book? If not, that's fine too.
TFYT
SJ
 
Re: School me on saddles please

The Schaller was massive, but had that "sitar" sound on open G, which sucked, killed almost all harmonics. I guess the holes were badly cut. Gotoh was much better while slightly less massive, but still hard metal.
 
Re: School me on saddles please

O.K. Thanks greekdude,
Next 2 purchases (still can't find my original saddles), a micro tuner, and Gotoh saddles.
Thanks,
SJB
 
Re: School me on saddles please

I would go with a Western saddle. There are a couple of different stiles depending on whether it is a working saddle of not and on how old it is. Some of the old one had a really high back on them. Not sure what that would do to the tone of your horse though.
Your turn Aceman!
 
Re: School me on saddles please

J E C..... About the high back,
With that kind of saddle I would sure hate to get a wound 52 Ernie Ball wedgie! Thanks for the heads up. I'm sure Gotoh has a fix for this. A Rev. Billy .008 wedgie wouldn't be a wedgie, it would be vertical prostate surgery. You guys under 50 who don't get this joke, wait a decade or two, and you'll see it really ISN'T funny.
SJ
 
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Re: School me on saddles please

i hate to say this but I had some graph tech tusk saddles on a strat that I put on after I sold my S saddles to a customer in need. They sounded pretty good.

FYI, in german saddles are called "rider (reiter)" and top nuts are called "saddle (sattel)".

just a little bit of trivia I picked up working for Hohner, a propos of sweet nothing...
 
Re: School me on saddles please

My MIJ strat stock saddle broke, so I bought a set of raw vintage RVS-108. Very nice chrome plating and finishing, certainly better looking than the stock. But honestly, I hear very minor tonal difference.
Take my opinion with grain of salt because I also prefer the tone of full-sized zinc block to "cold rolled" steel stuff, and that's totally wrong according to strat purists lol.
Anyway I had another MIJ strat in the past, which had tremendous resonance and sustain. I tinkered with it a lot and traced the "mojo" to the trem mounting screws. Instead of big heavy steel like on normal fender it had smaller, flimsy screws like the one you usually find on hardware store. I'm not even sure if it's steel because it's quite light.
I put a set of genuine fender screws and a lot of the resonance was gone, it sounded just like any ordinary strat.
 
Re: School me on saddles please

DrJ4kal, I think you are right on about the screws:
That is very fascinating, seriously, MAYBE-the heavy steel screws ate so much of the string vibration that there was little left to transfer to the body or plate, not to mention the saddles. I believe you. This makes sense in a scientific way. I can see good wood vibrating longer, depending on the wood, and why that would transfer back and forth to the saddles, causing sustain, and we have all heard the sound of basswood compared to mahogany and how the lower frequency of the wood will be heard through the pickup. Most of us have heard it anyway. Point being, in that one isolated spot, plate screw to wood, maybe sh*tty is better, the vibrations pass right though cheap, porous metal, therefor less likely to hold the vibration and transfer it straight to the plate and wood at the same time.
This gives credence to the fact that a floating vibrato unit, only partially attached to the body (a 2 point fulcrum) definitely improves with a thicker brass type block as there is less body to plate transference. So steel saddles AND a brass block would be far more important to the sound than a vibrato floating on 3 or more thick screw absorbing a lot of energy before passing it to the wood. This makes perfect sense.
Hence, even though zinc is a sh*tty block, a block is better than a thin, nicely rolled piece of steel. Again, therefore, in my scenario, BLOCK steel saddles would definitely be better and ADD to a deeper tone with my 2 point fulcrum and brass block.
Think of a lighting rod-A nice thick one takes the electricity and absorbs it before the barn burns down. A lousy thin one can't take it all and transfers some of than lightning (or vibration, in this case) to the barn, enough to burn the sucker down!!
That does it, Gotoh steel saddles for sure.
Anyway, DrJ4ckal, excellent food for thought, and I am a true believer of what you say in your post.
SJ......p.s. ......I don't advocate crappy metal, but there is a balance between the two, depending where and how the plate touches the wood, like a 6-post or a less direct contact, like a 2 point fulcrum. So-variables come into play, of course, before someone chimes in on that fact, it is duly noted.
 
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