Don't understand modern Martin S1 Uke saddle compensation

omlove

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A very basic question but cannot find answer. So asking for your kind help.

On S1 model, the C string saddle portion is compensated towards the nut, not towards the bridge. This is really against my knowledge - C string is same material as E and A. Why is that?

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Does the instrument have good intonation on that string or any of the strings or is it out.

In our mass produced world sometimes things just "are" and not much thought has been put into it.
 
I have never known about how ukulele saddle should be compensated. Being all plain strings. Mostly I have thought it should be thicker the string, leave closer from saddle. It is just Your E-string looks like leaving the earliest, not the A string.

And there are none slots on the bridge saddle of what to hide filing like on the nut, so to me too it looks a lot suspicious. I think it is not good, your saddle.

Maybe it is not from Martin, but rather some middleman's doing, I rather think so. Saddles are lowered from the bottom, not filing the top!
I don't believe Martin would have ever sold an uke with such a saddle.
 
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Jarmo, this is indeed the saddle on my S1 as well. Attached is a picture of it that I just took.

Next is a picture of my Enya EUR-X1 camp soprano where the C string is compensated the most, E string less, and very little difference between the G and A strings.

Omlove seems to have a point. You would think that the C and E strings should be compensated for in terms of thickness, but Marin makes the C and A a shorter scale length than the G and E. Go figure.

So I pulled out the tuner...neither seems to have an advantage over the other. Both are still in the “green” at the 12th fret. Both are running the same strings (M600)...but the Martin seems to have a scale length of 13.75 inches and the Enya 13.5 inches...roughly measured with a flexible measuring tape.

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Looks exactly backwards to me. Distance from the nut should be relative to the thickness of the string. Fatter string, further from the nut assuming all the strings have the same relative linear density. (unless, of course, the photo is flipped 180 degrees :cool:).
 
I don’t think you can put the Martin saddle in backwards. A 180° rotation of the saddle results in the same shape. Maybe that is the purpose?
 
I don’t think you can put the Martin saddle in backwards. A 180° rotation of the saddle results in the same shape. Maybe that is the purpose?

What I meant is the the digital photo was flipped so that everything was backwards. Sometimes when I'm trying to be funny it doesn't come across well in a post :(.
 
Jarmo, this is indeed the saddle on my S1 as well. Attached is a picture of it that I just took.

Next is a picture of my Enya EUR-X1 camp soprano where the C string is compensated the most, E string less, and very little difference between the G and A strings.

Omlove seems to have a point. You would think that the C and E strings should be compensated for in terms of thickness, but Marin makes the C and A a shorter scale length than the G and E. Go figure.

So I pulled out the tuner...neither seems to have an advantage over the other. Both are still in the “green” at the 12th fret. Both are running the same strings (M600)...but the Martin seems to have a scale length of 13.75 inches and the Enya 13.5 inches...roughly measured with a flexible measuring tape.

View attachment 106218
View attachment 106219

It's good that you put a tuner on it and checked.

I dd a little looking around and it seems that there are indeed different strategies for compensating saddles and taking the second string long (the E string in our case) is in fact reasonable common on guitars. I can't say that I really understand other than different strings behave in different manners.
 
What I meant is the the digital photo was flipped so that everything was backwards. Sometimes when I'm trying to be funny it doesn't come across well in a post :(.

Sorry, Uke Don...I don’t see any of the pictures as flipped, so I didn’t get the joke. And there are cases of people putting a compensated saddle in backwards. So...I thought you were being serious...and looked closely and realized that the Martin saddle can likely be dropped in either way, as long as it isn’t upside down!
 
This compensation makes no sense to me either, especially on a soprano. The only way to make sense of it, to me, is that this could be a saddle that is actually meant for a tenor that is set up with a high G and a (thinner) wound C string.

Even if you turn this saddle by 180 degrees, it will still compensate the same strings towards the same position, so no error there.

One thing I found is that some ukulele companies just saw off guitar saddles - apparently without giving much thought -, so the compensation on them is actually meant for guitars.
 
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This compensation makes no sense to me either, especially on a soprano. The only way to make sense of it, to me, is that this could be a saddle that is actually meant for a tenor that is set up with a high G and a (thinner) wound C string.

Even if you turn this saddle by 180 degrees, it will still compensate the sam strings towards the same position, so no error there.

One thing I found is that some ukulele companies just saw off guitar saddles - apparently without giving much thought -, so the compensation on them is actually meant for guitars.

Martin saddle can be flipped. But the relationship betwee C and E are the same. Please see below a photo from another dealer that shows the saddle dropped in 180 degrees from the first photo I linked.

The difference is in the first photo, the A is in on the front edge of the saddle while G sits in the middle. In the second photo the A is in the middle while G sits on the back edge of the saddle. Either way A is closer to nut than G - that's "normal" given A is slightly thinner or higher pitch. Either way C and E stays the same but C is always thicker and should sit on the very back edge.

I think Rakelele may be right, Martin being a guitar company did not put too much thought on this one, just use guitar saddle compensation which is made for a wound 3rd string.

But they are a reputable maker, cannot believe they would be this reckless.

(the design is kind of clever so the saddle can be dropped in either way and looks like there indeed are two ways coming from the factory.)

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Did you check the intonation? Does your uke intonate correctly "despite" the weird shape? Having played around with some compensated saddles vs. non-compensated saddles on the same instrument, I came to find that compensation doesn't necessarily make that much of a difference on a uke.
 
omlove. Can you put a tuner on the instrument in question and check the intonation up the neck, checking frets 3,5,7,10 and 12 and tell us what the intonation is like.

We can all speculate until the cows come home but what is the intonation really like on your instrument. Going long for the second plain string is fairly normal for guitars. It depends on the strings I guess and if it works it works.

If it doesn't work well that's a different story.
 
I think the compensated saddle is there to make people think they are getting a uke with a better saddle than the others.
On a soprano , I dont think there would be much difference in sound with a straight saddle and a compensated saddle , the strings are too short to make a difference in sound that
anyone can hear.
 
omlove. Can you put a tuner on the instrument in question and check the intonation up the neck, checking frets 3,5,7,10 and 12 and tell us what the intonation is like.

We can all speculate until the cows come home but what is the intonation really like on your instrument. Going long for the second plain string is fairly normal for guitars. It depends on the strings I guess and if it works it works.

If it doesn't work well that's a different story.

So I checked with my Snark HZ1 tuner. I only have one tuner so it's not scientific. Aquila 4U string settled in for about a week. All strings have good intonation up to 10th fret. C string is slightly sharp afterwards. Other three are within tolerable range.

By tolerable I mean the needle on the tuner still have the center green line on. C string 12th fret C is sharp that the needle is only in the yellow range.

I do have a humble opinion from my experience with classical guitars: classical guitar have high action so strings are stretched more when fretted. Also equal temperament may not sound equally good all over the fingerboard. There are other factors including player adjustment so really the saddle compensation is not all that important on nylon string guitar. Actually on my classical I tuned the G string slight flat in open position to make it sound good in higher frets.
 
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C string 12th fret C is sharp that the needle is only in the yellow range.

Good to know that the intonation on your uke is tolerable. I think it is highly probable that the C string is going sharp up the neck because of the "strange" compensation. Most likely, it would be better with a non-compensated saddle.
 
I read somewhere (maybe Booli told me, I think) that these saddles that are compensated like this on many of the Martin ukes made/designed in the past decade are done so, specifically to intonate much better for using the Martin M600 and M620 strings which have a C string that is of greater diameter than nearly all other fluorocarbon strings, in 0.0340" with the exception of the D'Addario EJ99 fluorocarbon strings, which only came to the market last January 2017.

If you plan to use other strings, and you do not find the intonation acceptible to you, you can pick up a replacement saddle at lots of online vendors for $5-$10 and compensate accordingly to get better intonation that will be exact only to that specific set of strings.

What lots of uke players do not realize, is that strings with differing tension/diameters may in fact require different compensation, and each model of uke will be different due to changes in the build specifications.

Expecting one compensation to work for any/all other strings that are not the design/build target is a recipe for disappointment.

BTW - I've seen also that the Martin OXK and OX Bamboo ukes have the same compensation is the photo in the first post to this thread.
 
I read somewhere (maybe Booli told me, I think) that these saddles that are compensated like this on many of the Martin ukes made/designed in the past decade are done so, specifically to intonate much better for using the Martin M600 and M620 strings which have a C string that is of greater diameter than nearly all other fluorocarbon strings, in 0.0340" with the exception of the D'Addario EJ99 fluorocarbon strings, which only came to the market last January 2017.

If you plan to use other strings, and you do not find the intonation acceptible to you, you can pick up a replacement saddle at lots of online vendors for $5-$10 and compensate accordingly to get better intonation that will be exact only to that specific set of strings.

What lots of uke players do not realize, is that strings with differing tension/diameters may in fact require different compensation, and each model of uke will be different due to changes in the build specifications.

Expecting one compensation to work for any/all other strings that are not the design/build target is a recipe for disappointment.

BTW - I've seen also that the Martin OXK and OX Bamboo ukes have the same compensation is the photo in the first post to this thread.

Exactly. I had a Bruko that had great intonation with the strings it came with, as well as the next couple sets I used (Oasis or Martin) but then put a different brand on and it was poor. I wrote to Bruko about it and they said, "Don't use those strings." I think you may be stuck with Martin strings, but they sound great with that uke.
 
If the intonation is OK up to the 10th fret then that's a good result for a Soprano. You could possible fine tune the intonation for ONE set of strings if you wanted to yet without a very accurate tuner doing anything is a stab in the dark.
 
I read somewhere (maybe Booli told me, I think) that these saddles that are compensated like this on many of the Martin ukes made/designed in the past decade are done so, specifically to intonate much better for using the Martin M600 and M620 strings which have a C string that is of greater diameter than nearly all other fluorocarbon strings, in 0.0340" with the exception of the D'Addario EJ99 fluorocarbon strings, which only came to the market last January 2017.

BTW - I've seen also that the Martin OXK and OX Bamboo ukes have the same compensation is the photo in the first post to this thread.


I believe this is the case. I bought a used Bamboo OX and it was strung with Worth Browns. The intonation was "OK" but not great and it bothered me. I swapped them out for the M600s and intonation was perfect after that. I think Martin designs their ukes to work best with their own strings.
 
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